


Another Life

by Starlight713



Series: Another Life [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Smut, F/M, Flirts with Canon, I dunno life is messy like that sometimes, I just meant to flirt with you but I stumbled and fell headlong into feelings, Nuka world dlc, POV Alternating, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Requited Unrequited Love, Slow Burn, Some suicidal ideation mentions, Unrequited Love, or is it???
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 18:16:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 30
Words: 67,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13300521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starlight713/pseuds/Starlight713
Summary: Cori and Gage are walking a razor's edge at Nukaworld. The deck was stacked against them from the start.





	1. Full Dark

                He had a fucking kid. That’s what she was hearing. Why he’d been so cagey. He had a kid. A kid who was alive somewhere, and sick. Not like her kid, who—

                She swallowed that thought with the lump in her throat.                   

                “No.” She didn’t know what she was even saying “no” too. She didn’t know what MacCready had even said. _If_ he had even said anything just then. He looked at her, all concern and kindness.

                “What is it, Boss? I know I kinda—”

                “No.” She stepped back and almost tripped over a mangled guard rail. There were sounds coming out of her mouth, but she couldn’t figure out a single one of them. The man outside the wall at Covenant had said they could stay the night, but when she looked up at the high cement wall, she felt like she was a million feet up in the air about to tip over into a swirling grey abyss. MacCready secured his gun over his shoulder to reach out one hand and Corinne flinched back so hard she actually _did_ fall. Her hired gun started over to help her, but she scrambled to her feet with her hands out in front of her.

                Stop.

_Stop._

                “Boss, I—”

                “No. Go. Go away. You’re out of your contract. Keep the caps and go.”

                “Boss—”

_“Go.”_

                He brushed his hands down the front of his coat and waited a long second, trying to figure her out. Tough luck, kid, _she_ was still trying to figure her shit out. MacCready finally shrugged, extended one arm to shake her hand, and when she didn’t accept, walked back towards Covenant.

                She watched his silhouette as he disappeared beyond the massive gate. He didn’t once look back at her.

                Corinne’s palms were flat against the ground—wet earth, damp, rotting leaves, and something sharp. When she moved her hands to examine, she found a bent-up old cap had stuck into her palm, leaving a ring of tiny indented pinpoints. A little circle. She threw the cap as far as she could and heard a soft _plink_ as it landed in the river behind her. It took her a minute to realize how dark it was getting. How long had she been sitting there? She was icy, stiff, and the seat of her grimy, hand-me-down pants were wet from sitting on the cold ground.

                Preston would want her to come home to Sanctuary. He was always trying to keep her there—do this, do that, help this person, sit and talk. In her old life, Preston and Nate would have been real buddies. Good pals. Preston would have watched Sunday night football on their cramped couch, attended barbeques in the summer, and watched Shaun when Nate and Corinne went out to dinner on their anniversary. He would have been on their holiday card list. He would have been one of the neighborhood block party organizers. Preston was so kind and considerate and genuine. There was nothing bad she could say about the man.

                And being around him made her want to die.

                Not dramatically, and not for any real rational reason. But it did.                                                           

                The merc had been her last hope. The mean-mug, cap-grubbing, grimy, grumpy merc from the most downtrodden bar in the most downtrodden corner of the Commonwealth. The reporter was too nosey, the private eye was too pushy, the junkie was too much of a mess, hell on toast, even the goddamned Supermutant read Shakespeare. MacCready had been the only person who seemed like he could keep his head down, do his job, and let her be. And now she knew he had a kid. She couldn’t _un-_ know that. She couldn’t _not_ think about his skinny arms wrapped around a tiny squalling bundle that looked, in her imagination, a little too much like Shaun. And what she wouldn’t give just to not think about that now, because being alone scared the hell out of her, but being with any of those people would be infinitely worse. She couldn’t look any fucking one of them in the eye.

                It was night now. Full dark. She could see Covenant’s lights up ahead, bright and warm against the fuzzy indigo that had settled around her. No way in hell she was retreating up the hill to the settlement. Or any of the handful of settlements Preston had helped her pin down around the Boston area. Or home. She couldn’t go back home.

                A small voice in the back of her head that sounded suspiciously like Nate reminded her that her mother always said “Home was where the heart is.” Another reason not to go back to that shell that had once been her beautiful blue military-subsidized house. She’d rather not have a heart, right about now.

                When she finally stood up, she had to stamp pins and needles out of her feet for a solid minute. The noise brought down a couple of guards from the settlement—she heard their footsteps getting closer and the thought of having to talk to anyone— _anyone,_ right now, but especially tired-eyed wastelanders or MacCready—sent her pulse skittering under her skin. Her cheeks heated up. The world tilted around her. Without even thinking to do it, she lurched forward and started down the hill towards the bank of the river. Two steps in and she slipped, sliding all the way down the rest of the hill until icy water shot up around her on all sides.

                Up her nose, down her throat before she clamped her mouth shut, through her clothes. She floundered, unsure which way was up. Even with her eyes open, it was all just dark. Her lungs seized like they were lashing out against the lack of air. There was a faint stab in her side when she thrashed her arms around her. Just when her head started to hurt, one boot scraped ground and she pushed against it so hard that, with some kicking, the force of it finally threw her up into the crisp night. She gulped down air as if she had never tasted it.

                Even with her head above water, she couldn’t see. In old movies before the war, people in the woods had always been able to see by the light of the moon, but those movies were either lying to her, or she was suffering vision loss after almost drowning. Either way, she could barely make out her hand in front of her face, and this river had a current. The light from Covenant was gone. No telling how far she’d drifted while trying not to drown.

                She tried to swim for a moment, but she couldn’t touch the ground without going under (and she was _not_ diving back under for even a half-second). She couldn’t figure out which direction the shore was in.

                She wondered if the shriveled old man who called himself her son could see her. He’d seen her leave the vault. He’d probably seen her cry her eyes out at the Dugout. He’d seen her coming after she’d killed the courser. Why wouldn’t he be watching now? And, if he was watching, she wondered if he felt even the tiniest tinge of pity watching her flounder around in icy water. She doubted he felt anything at all.

                Her pack was heavy—full of stims, food, her sleeping bag, the tape Nate had given her. The one she’d snapped in half without even listening to. Part of her brain acknowledged that, without supplies, she’d be dead in a week. No one but Preston doles out charity in the wastes. She was already shrugging out of it. Her icy fingers fumbled with the plastic clips across her chest and waist (meant to hold the pack on her shoulders even if she, oh, say, fell into a river at night, she supposed). Once it was off, it was easier to keep her head above the water. She drifted a little longer before her feet finally found purchase on a shallower part of the river. The first direction she walked in led her deeper. It took her four tries to finally point herself towards solid land, but when she did, she scrambled up onto the dirt, curled up right by the water under what felt like an outcropping of rock, and shivered so hard she thought she must be digging a hole in the mud. Everything was a fog. She couldn’t keep her thoughts straight, and she was so fucking cold that it hurt like a constant stab over every inch of her skin. Somehow, in the restless tossing and turning, she fell asleep.

                She wasn’t sure if it was really early morning or early at night when she woke up. The sky was a hazy blue-grey. Her PipBoy was waterlogged and in the process of rebooting. She had nothing but the clothes on her back, somewhere around fifty caps in her pockets, and a couple of bullets with no gun. She was caked in mud and her skin felt clammy. When she stood up, her knees knocked and then gave out completely, spilling her back onto the ground. When she finally got up again, she was able to stumble forward.

                No map, she had no idea where in the hell she was headed. No food. No clean water. No clothes. If she died out here in the woods, no one would look twice at her body. It would be just another decomposing mass dropped somewhere in the middle of nowhere. No one would probably even see it for a long time, and even then, maybe there wouldn’t be enough left of her to be found. Life would go on. Would Shaun even notice? Would he send out some Courser or other to collect her remains? Would there be synths made with her genetic structure?

                Corinne made it to a road, but roads didn’t mean a whole lot in a world where cars were either useless hunks of scrap or ticking time bombs just waiting to go off in the middle of a firefight. It was getting dark again, already. She must have woken up on the later side. After a minute of looking at the road, she decided that she had nowhere to go and laid down on her side in the middle of the street. Surrendered.


	2. Biding Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gage is giving Coulter one last chance, if he's smart enough to take it.

                Gage was so sick of shit that shouldn’t be his fucking business becoming his fucking business. For fuck’s sake.

                He leaned back against the busted down bumper car, tapping the socket wrench against his thigh. Coulter stuck out his hand so Gage passed the tool over. Another day sitting in the empty Gauntlet, pissing away precious time while he tinkered with that damn suit. Just about the only time Coulter would even talk to him nowadays.

                “Listen, Boss.” He thunked his heel on the cement floor. “You gotta get out there. Show the gangs you’re still the damn Overboss. People’re starting to forget.”

                Colter barely looked up from the massive leg of his power armor. He was crouched so far over the thing it looked like he was hugging it. Fuckin’ figures.

                “What in the hell do I have you for, if you’re not handling the little shit for me, Gage?”

                “It ain’t the little shit I’m worried about, _Boss.”_

                “They’ll fall back in line.” Colter waved a hand behind him dismissively, tweaking a bolt on the shin back into place. The sun was setting outside; he could tell by the grey-orange light eeking in through the dirty windows of the arena. The bright overhead lights cast shadows over the stadium around the arena proper. Place looked like a fucking workshop—tools laying around, pieces parts all over the floor. It sure as shit wasn’t why the arena was here. He was sorry he’d ever tossed out the idea.

                “We’ve been out here two years, Colter.” Gage folded his arms over his chest. “The arena fights bought you some time, but not a lot. We need to make moves, and right quick. The gangs are two bar fights away from tearing each other to pieces, and if they start at it now, it’ll be a bloodbath.”

                “That’s enough, Porter.”

                “They can’t stay cooped up like this. We gotta start taking back—”

                Colter spiked the socket wrench in his hand. It bounced once, and then skid with an awful clatter to land at the toe of Gage’s boot. The arena was silent for a moment, before Colter shot up onto his feet, teeth bared. All six feet of him, tensed up and ready to fight for the first time in a long goddamned time. He grabbed a fistful of Gage’s shirt through the heavy metal frame of his armor and jerked him half off his fucking feet. And goddamnit, Gage had put up with a lot of shit, but he was reaching the end of his tether. Gage’s fist clenched around Colter’s wrist. They locked eyes. For a split second, Gage wondered when in the hell it had gotten this bad, but this shitstorm had been brewing from the start; he knew it damn well.

                “You want to land yourself in the arena?” Colter spat onto the floor beside them.

                “Then who would run this place?”

                “Watch your fucking mouth.”

                That was when he decided it. Last chance, shithead. “You sure this is how you want it, Colter?”

                Coulter was breathing hard and there was a vein throbbing in his forehead like it was fixing to burst. It’d save everyone a lot of trouble if it did. Gage waited. Coulter bared his teeth.

                “I’m the fucking Overboss. I tell _you_ how I want it, and you don’t ask questions. Deal?”

                “Suit yourself.” Gage shoved away, stuffing his hands into his pockets to keep them from shaking. “I’ll handle the gangs.”

                “You’re goddamned right you will.”

                Colter dropped back down and snatched his wrench up off the ground, returning to work on that damn suit. Alright then. Have it your way. Gage had given him more than a fair chance to change his mind and come to his senses.

                Gage walked around the edge of the arena. Colter wasn’t even paying attention—still wrapped up in his goddamned building project. He crossed through the waiting room and into the locker room without Coulter so much as looking up. Place was a mess. Scattered with bodies and junk. He kicked a bloody baseball helmet out of the way and crossed to the far wall.

Next to the minigun in the corner, up in one of the empty lockers. Best place for it.

He pulled the watergun out from his back pocket and set it up by itself. He could get the gangs to wait a little longer, but this was it. He could only stall for so long before his head was on the block too, and he was just about done sticking his neck out for a stupid jackass on a powertrip. Seed was planted and now all there was to do was wait.

                Colter was done.


	3. One Foot, then the Other

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cori starts walking, with no goal in sight.

                She was surprised when she woke up. The sun was up. No telling how long she’d been sleeping there in the middle of nowhere, but the sun was up, so that was something. That was the benefit of living in the apocalypse, she supposed. Plenty of space, not so many people. But one of those massive bears should have got at her by all rights. She was almost disappointed.

                That was grim. She could practically hear Nate.

_Now dear, when you joke like that, I get worried you mean it._

                What if she did mean it?

_You shouldn’t say things like that._

                And why not?

_You just shouldn’t._

                Well. No one to stop her now, huh? She’d alienated everyone she’d stumbled into. Even goodie-two-shoes Preston Garvey would hate her. The journalist. The old woman. The mechanic. The merc. Her son. One by one, she’d pushed them all away, and for what? She spit out that thought, and the foul river water that was drying on her tongue. 

                No ruck. No supplies. No one to watch her die alone in the woods. All the times she thought she’d hit rock bottom in her old life; she wanted to laugh at the thought now. She hadn’t so much as _imagined_ rock bottom in her darkest nightmares.

                She peeled herself off the road, which was really nothing more than some pavement, broken up by clumps of dirt and scrabbly grass. Her head throbbed. Her limbs were heavy and ached, whether from the shivering or the almost drowning, she couldn’t be sure. It took more effort than it should have to lift the arm with her Pip Boy, but the effort was worth it. The damn thing had stopped its endless rebooting, and was finally back up and running. Good thing Vault Tech had thought to make these suckers apocalypse-proof. Probably about the only good thing Vault Tech had ever done. She tapped the screen, ignoring the diagnostic, until she landed on the map.

                Alright, so she was less lost.                                                                                                                                      

                Really, she hadn’t gone as far as she had thought. She’d felt like she must have drifted the length of the wasteland and landed somewhere altogether new. Not quite. She was looking at an overpass—it must have been the one that cut through Boston. She couldn’t remember the name right now. The murky river that ran by Covenant let out in the same place where the river by the Boathouse did. If she backtracked a little further East, she’d hit a bridge crossing over that river, and then she’d just have to slog North following the water to get to the safety of a Minuteman settlement. The Boathouse was barely on its feet, but they had sleeping bags, food, water, and shelter. It was less than a day’s walk.

                And then what?

                So she makes it to the Boathouse. They take her in because they know they are supposed to, not because they genuinely care that she spends the night somewhere safe. She washes the caked mud out of her hair, scrubs under her fingernails, eats some overboiled carrots and a bite or two of jerky, sleeps in a musty sleeping bag, on the floor of a ruined old house with ten other people. Then what?

                Then she’s right back where she started—surrounded by people who need her but don’t like her, and have families and sob stories. Why bother nearly drowning only to reset back to start? She hadn’t even fully made up her mind, but her legs creaked as she pulled herself up, pat herself down, and started walking. She followed the overpass west—away from Covenant to the North, Taffington to the North-East, and her son, wherever the hell he was.

                She walked till the sun set, which wasn’t as long as she would have thought, meaning she must have woken up around noon. So, still awake, she kept walking through the night. It was dark. Not just any dark, the special kind of dark that you only seemed to find alone, late at night in the Commonwealth. Her Pip said that she was near Lexington. She’d been told by everyone and their cousin that she should avoid Lexington, or she’d be swamped by raiders and ferals. Alright. Fine. She’d stick to the overpass when she could, and the ground under it when she couldn’t. The overpass didn’t seem to lead to anywhere in particular, but what the hell did she care? It led off the corner of her map, so that’s where she was going. Out. Out of the goddamned Commonwealth that had brought her nothing but pain in all the years she’d lived there before and after the bombs.

                Her body shook. She didn’t know a person could feel that hungry and keep going—gnawing in her stomach like she was literally eating herself alive from the inside out. Her mouth was dry. It had rained, and she had guzzled rainwater from her hands like she’d never seen the stuff before, but it was never enough. By the third day awake and walking, her vision was blurry. She hadn’t made it as far as she thought she had. She was maybe a day and change past Lexington when she saw Sunshine Tidings Co-Op pop up on her map. Just a little North of the overpass, maybe a day’s walk away. Small settlement—just getting onto its feet after she and the Merc kid had gone and cleared all the damn ferals out. Preston had asked her maybe a million times to help check in on them, but she’d never actually gone. She could stop for food if she really wanted to, but she wasn’t gonna. Not now. Nope, she was going to walk right off the face of the fucking Earth. She was determined to do it.

                When night fell, she had made such pitiful progress that she had to stop. She laid down under the overpass and slept until slivers of sunlight sliced through her closed eyes in the morning. Six AM or so, bright and early. Nate had always been trying to get her to wake-up earlier so they could go on walks together around their tidy little suburb. Who knew that all it would take was a nuclear apocalypse to get her up and walking? The laugh that burbled past her cracked lips was so foreign after two days of determined silence that it almost made her cry. Almost, but not quite.

                She drank stale water from a puddle. Off the ground, like a feral dog. If only Nate could see her now, on her hands and knees drinking water off the ground. She still hadn’t eaten since the lunch before stopping at Covenant, and even breathing hurt and made her hungry. At least it was still summer and the nights were mild. Once it started getting cold, she’d die. And maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, at this point.

                After another day or so, she hit the most run-down chapel on the ass-end of nowhere. Her map didn’t even have a name for it. A sign outside said ‘Our Lady of—” but the bombs had knocked off whatever saint or adjective had followed. Our Lady of a Roof over Our Heads. Our Lady of Not Getting Gored by Deathclaws. Night should fall soon. She hadn’t slept under a roof in so long—might as well make use of this one.

                The place was in sorry shape. The walls were crumbling and there were gaps in the high ceiling, but at least it was somewhere. She could push two pews together and make a rough trough to sleep in, so she wouldn’t have to sleep on the floor. There were a few skeletons scattered throughout the room, draped over pews and laying across the floor. People from her time. People she might have passed on the street, or seen at a coffee shop, or graduated with. People she should have died alongside. People she _wished_ she had died alongside.

                She stared at them for a long time before she realized it, with a sinking feeling. They were better dressed than she was. And one was better armed. If she had felt like a feral animal drinking from a puddle, she felt one million times worse standing over the skeletons of her old-world people, gritting her teeth and preparing to desecrate a body. In a church.

                She stripped what must have been a soldier first. All she had was a blue duster and her underthings. This fella had some nice, if somewhat worn fatigues. Bones scattered when she fought them off him. Too big on her, but the unlucky prick also had a belt, and she could cinch it down until the fatigues _did_ fit under her duster. He had better boots than hers, but she couldn’t get those to fit right, so she just stole the laces, since hers had ripped when she’d tripped over them. And when she saw that he had a gun tucked under him, she sifted through the remaining bones when she reached down to grab for it. Not a bad pistol. Better than nothing.

                In the suitcase of a woman who’d died wearing a blue dress she’d seen on the rack at Fallon’s, she found a watch (worthless, but she kept it anyways), what remained of a photo album, a fairly decent knife, some cash, and another handgun with four boxes of 10mm bullets. She pocketed what seemed useful and left the photo album and the cash to rot alongside the desecrated skeleton. Night was settling in so fast that her Pip’s flashlight couldn’t keep up. She had the sudden urge to keep moving. Keep going. She shouldn’t sleep here after what she had done. But she couldn’t walk any further, and she had shelter here. She’d collapse from exhaustion before making it out the door. Corinne settled into the nest she’d made in the pews earlier and prepared for some nightmares.

                She slept like a baby.

                Didn’t wake until 8:46 AM, according to her Pip. She was still so hungry it hurt and so thirsty it made her dizzy, but she hadn’t woken up with nightmares once. She didn’t know if that was better or worse than the alternative.


	4. Thin Ice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gage just needs a fuckin' miracle.

                The gang leaders were mostly reasonable about it. Not like anyone really had a lot of choices now that Colter had forced their hand, but he’d take anything he could get. Next person to enter the Gauntlet better be the winner.

                They met on common ground, in the back room of the arcade. Nisha, leaning against the wall, had gotten there before anyone else. Gage made it next, and sat his ass down on the table in the corner, facing Nisha so she couldn’t stab him in the side while she thought he wasn’t looking. Mags and William next. Mason last, filling up the room like some 400-pound gorilla, armed to the teeth, the fuckin’ idiot. Fritsch didn’t look twice at them, which was the best thing he could say about the man. Knew when to keep his damn mouth shut.

                “Mason. The door.” Gage jerked his head in the direction of the office door.                                     

                “What’s this about, Gage?” Nisha’s voice was smooth like always, and like always, it made him want to crawl out of his skin. “Any interesting developments?”

                “Colter’s too far gone. There was nothing I could say that he’d take.”                     

                “So we move along to plan ‘B’?” Mags this time, speaking for her and her brother. Her stare was fierce. “Or we could remove the problem ourselves.”

                There was an uneasy quiet. He was surprised she even said it—the Operators didn’t have the numbers the Pack did, or the ruthlessness the Disciples did. In a firefight, they had the most defenses, but their offensive strength wouldn’t get them two steps past their front door. Plus, they would be fighting on both sides, with the Pack out by the market and the Disciples closer to Fizztop. Smack in the middle, and with only enough turrets to provide a strong resistance, if they were ambushed and dug in. If this turned into an all-out fight for control, they’d be good and fucked once they ran out of provisions. And that didn’t even consider what would happen to the rest of the gangs. Or what would happen to _him._

                Not fucking, smart, that’s what that was.

                “We all agreed,” Gage said, arms crossed, “that we do best when we stick together and don’t step on each other’s toes.”

                “The Disciples stand with the agreed-upon arrangement. Neutral leadership.” Nisha leaned in, a hair away from Mags’ face. “Unless you’d rather settle this in the ring one-on-one, Maggie.”

                Gage could hear Mag’s teeth grind from where he was standing.

                “What’s in this for the Pack?” Mason asked.

                Nisha stepped back from Mags which was good, because William looked like he was two seconds away from pushing back. It wasn’t like Nisha to enforce order. The Disciples weren’t about order the way the Operators were. Ain’t right. Something was up—long term, this was almost definitely gonna come back and bite him in the ass, but he didn’t have enough ground in the short-term to think about the long-term. If Nisha was on his side, he’d take what he could get. Nisha was toe-to-toe with Mason.

                “What’s in it for you? Truce saves your skin. Truce means I don’t send Dixie into the Amphitheater to slaughter every last one of you dogs in your sleep.”

                “Say that shit again, Nisha. I ain’t had a good fight in too long.”

                Gage slammed his hand down on the desk before Nisha could fire back. Nisha and Mason had the worst tempers of the bunch, and it he’d be damned if he let things get ugly before he could get himself clear of this hole.

                “Listen up. You may not like each other—hell, you may not like me—but we all agreed.” There was a tense silence. “If we pull this off, we can take back the parks, get the power going, and grow our numbers. After that, the Commonwealth is ours.”

                All four gang leaders eyed him and then each other. A goddamned stand-off if he’d ever seen one. Real tense. He leaned back onto the desk, calm as he could manage. At least no one had guns out just yet.

                “Look, you don’t even gotta look each other in the eye. Just give me some time to get someone good through the Gauntlet and we can all go back to looking out for ourselves once the new Overboss is in our back pocket.”

                “And who will keep that Overboss in line, Gage? You, I presume?” Mags’ tone was dry.

                “I ain’t part of a gang—I survive if I keep balance and get us territory. You _want_ me keeping the new Overboss in line.”

Nisha eyed him, but Mason laughed, loud as ever, damn near startling him out of his skin. Man couldn’t do anything without causing a damn scene.

                “Alright, alright Porter.” Mason seemed genuinely amused—like this whole powder-keg of an operation was a damn game. “It’s not on my head if you fuck this up. But if anything happens to the Pack, we’ll tar and feather your ass, and I’ll hang you over my chair like a trophy.”

                Mason waved his hand and was out the door. One down. Mags and Nisha stared at each other for a moment longer. Finally, William laid a hand on Mag’s shoulder, signaling.

                “The Pack will only be able to tar and feather you if they can find you. Remember that when you think about the Operator’s share in this.” The whole time Mags was threatening Gage, she didn’t break eye-contact with Nisha. Tensions high—he’d have to keep an eye on that. Mason would laugh off an insult, but Mags would remember today. His fucking job was never done. After another moment, she and her brother were on their way, leaving only Nisha and Gage behind. He looked down at the soulless eyes behind that heavy metal mask.

                “They make threats because their presence isn’t a threat.” Her voice was low and calm. She coulda been talking about the weather, for how she sounded. She fidgeted with her knife, letting it spin through her fingers, catching it when it twirled around her thumb. “I can only keep my Disciples in step for so long. If this plan doesn’t work, you know what will happen to you. Make sure you’re more use to us alive.”

                She waited another second and let the words settle on the air before stepping out, leaving him alone in that claustrophobic little office. Gage let out the breath he’d been holding and slumped against the wall.

                Peace was peace. This wasn’t the best situation, but the whole thing had gone better than it could have, knowing the gang leaders. He’d take what he could get and worry about the rest later. But this plan had to be rock solid, and it was about as far from that as it could be. Too many things he couldn’t control—they needed an Overboss he could sway, but also one who looked strong to the gangs. Someone charismatic, fast, and brutal, but equal parts smart and calculating. Someone who wasn’t afraid to get their hands dirty and do the work that needed doing, and wouldn’t get lazy after one victory.

                He closed the office door behind him and headed back out towards Fizztop to radio for Redeye. See if he’d gotten any broadcasts from the metro station out in the Commonwealth. Fresh blood. He kept his hand close to his gun the whole walk back to base, just in case some shithead decided to test his reflexes.

                What he needed was a fucking miracle, and all he had was a water-gun and a temporary truce.


	5. Fight or Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cori has no idea what the hell she has gotten herself into.

                It was the radio signal that had drawn her to the subway station. That loopy old jingle that used to play on all the radio stations, and in between news segments on the TV. She’d planned to bring Shaun to Nukaworld before the war. Thought it would be a good time—get away from everyday life, wear some silly hats and bond. It was part of the picture of motherhood she’d carried somewhere in her soul that had burned away upon meeting her son after the apocalypse. She buried that thought so far down that it couldn’t see the light of day, but then she was at the abandoned station, smashing into an old vending machine to get at some pre-packaged snack foods. First meal in days.

                She had nowhere to go, and the idea popped into her head and took root before she could stop it. What if she could live out the rest of her sad life at the park? It was probably abandoned by now—a whole run-down mess of a place that was hers for the taking. The Minutemen hadn’t ever even dreamed of looking into the park for a settlement, and probably wouldn’t ever have the resources to make it out that far from their home base. She could wander the parks by herself and never have to see another settler, or merc-with-a-heart-of-gold, or plucky journalist again. No Preston, no Minutemen, no synths, no Institute, no Shaun, no rules. Just Corinne Lucille Hart and a lifetime of sunsets. Beautiful, in that stoic kind of way. The whole idea scared her to her core, but she couldn’t stand the thought of anything else. It was the single most uncomfortable feeling she’d found in the Wasteland. Couldn’t be with people, couldn’t be alone. But better to be alone than in a Settlement, she supposed.

                She hadn’t expected the subway to work. She was thinking she’d follow the track to the park as best as she could and camp out along the way. Maybe a three or four day’s walk. The place was mostly dark and smelled dank. But then she saw the console—all lit up like the bombs had never fallen—sitting in the office across from the concourse. A little fiddling with the terminal and she was in (and she couldn’t _believe_ that some asshole had made the terminal password the word “password”). Three options—monorail schedule, powergrid, launch tram. She fiddled with the switches around the terminal for a minute, but the backup power for the tram kicked in and all the lights in the place turned on, bright and cheery while the speakers played that jingle again. _Quench your thirst for adventure at Nuka World._ It was meant to be. Sorta.

                She reactivated the monorail and set the depart time for five minutes before boarding the tram. The tram itself was mostly glass—real nice even after all these years, and much better than the ones that ran under Boston. There was a cockpit that had a chair and a single lever with three settings. Forward, backward, emergency stop. She didn’t even have to try to figure that out, though, because within minutes, the tram doors slid shut, sealing her in. A polite female voice urged her to hold onto a railing or remain seated for the duration of the ride, first in English, then in Spanish, then French. She dropped into the driver’s seat, because at that point, why the hell not? The tram lurched forward and into an underground tunnel.

                Twenty minutes and they were above-ground and speeding along a barren wasteland. No people in sight. Maybe one Yao Gui here and there, or the miscellaneous Radscorpion, but no settlements. And the further she got into nothingness, the less and less she saw.

                Maybe an hour later and the park dominated the landscape. Still no one in sight, so she thought things were looking good. That’s when it really struck her. Essentially, she’d found a nice quiet place to wander aimlessly and then die. She wouldn’t survive on her own anywhere for long periods of time—she had no illusions about that. Animals would eventually get her, or disease, or hunger. She had maybe eight or nine more granola bars in her bag from what she’d salvaged from the vending machine. She couldn’t farm to save her life, and she wasn’t the best hunter. She’d scrape by for a while—just long enough to decide she didn’t want this anymore so she could opt out on her own terms. So yes. She had found an excellent place to drop dead. The realization should have hit her with a little more force but really, she’d been hanging on by a thread for so long that the impending fall wasn’t half as terrifying as it ought to be.

                Then the train stopped at the station. She had barely stumbled out when the speakers kicked on. At first, she thought it was just a recording, but then, the voice addressed her personally.

_Attention_ _all my favorite undesirables out there. In case you haven't noticed, looks like we got ourselves some fresh meat to run the Gauntlet! Don’t be shy, sweetheart, we all know you’re here. And don’t even try to run—trains don’t work unless we make ‘em. Step right up, because if you wait too long, we’ll have to come and getcha!_

                Gleeful. Ecstatic. And very deeply wrong.

                Panic, bright and sharp, a stab in the gut.

                This was not a quiet place to die alone.

                No.

                No no no.

                She looked around for a console to control the tram, but there was nothing in sight. And when she stepped back on, the controls didn’t work. The station was located high up—at least a forty-foot drop down, since it was designed to get a birds-eye view of the parks as visitors came in. Without a control terminal, she wasn’t going anywhere. She almost vomited up her lunch.

                Raider territory.

                She hadn’t remembered when she’d first heard the jingle. She’d been so hungry and tired and dehydrated that it had completely slipped her mind. Preston had said they wouldn’t have the people or resources to take Nukaworld because it was so far away, and because it was rumored that the last settlement had fallen to raiders. She’d stumbled right into raider territory, and left herself with no way out. If she hadn’t been half-delirious already, she would have lost it, but she was in such a haze that the adrenaline hit her and just made her shake like she was dying from cold. Her fingers were numb. She’d come here to die, but faced with the very real possibility that there was someone here eager to gut her like a fish…

                Survival instinct.

                Fight or flight.

                Flight wasn’t an option.

                Reality settled in quick. The only out was the stairway down at the far end of the station, where someone had painted the word “GAUNTLET” in dripping white paint. There was a rising static under her skin—dizzying. But then she was halfway down the stairs.

                The scary thing about the Gauntlet wasn’t the constant color commentary or the trigger traps. It was the fact that it had killed people who were bigger and badder than she was, and that the evidence of this was scattred around every corner. The good thing was that she also found all the chems, armor, and weapons the dead had left behind. She cycled through guns she found until she picked up one she liked. She snagged a Louisville slugger off a dead Gunner. She was awash in bullets of all kinds and pocketed as many as she could fit as she went through. Slow going, but she was making it so far. Her law school tutor had always said “use the test to take the test,” and she did. She scooped up mines, deactivated them the way the Merc had shown her to, and then replanted them to kill bugs and vermin and the occasional turret, if she got close enough. Sprung tripwires with old helmets and boots when she saw them. At the start, a lot of it was bugs and turrets, but when she made it deeper into the maze, she found bots. Then, when she managed to get past those and the garage, and then outside, there were people. Raiders, running along the caged roof of the Gauntlet, shooting down at her. She managed to pick off maybe one or two, but she spent more energy running from cover to cover. When she was back inside a building and the raiders stopped coming, she darted into the first room she saw and braced against the door, waiting for the trick. There had been a trick in every room so far—from the mines and tripwire, to the room with the poisonous gas, to the swarm of giant ants that attacked when she tried to cross the broken-down workshop. She looked around the locker room, which was littered with weapons and the occasional dead body.

                The trick was that she was locked in. And there was no getting out.

                A voice came over the intercom calling to her—low and gruff. Not the same as the one who announced her progress over the radio; this was a different man. Less bombast. Asked a couple of questions. She was in such a haze she had no idea what the hell she was saying back. He told her to grab the squirtgun in the corner. Squirtgun. As if this shit couldn’t get any more ridiculous. Something about electricity? Water? Power? She couldn’t make all of the words make sense. Her heart was hammering, she was dizzy, and she had a bad feeling she was bleeding from a bulletwound in her arm. She raided the chem stash she had accumulated running the gauntlet, and took every fucking thing she had. Two stims, a few medex, some radaway, a handful of buffout, a puff of jet, and even some psycho, which her mom had said could cause people to think they were zombies. Everything. She gave it a solid five minutes, but the high kicked in a lot faster than she remembered. Her head spun, the lights in the room were so bright they burned, and she could feel the weight of her clothes on her skin—every tag and seam and stitch. Hyper aware. Everything shimmered. Holy shit.

                She’d gotten this far putting one foot in front of the other. Might as well get to stepping.


	6. Long Live the Queen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This little blonde stranger squares up all five feet and four inches of herself to face down a goddamned human tank.

                She was smaller up-close. Little blonde thing with mis-matched armor, a baseball bat, a pipe-pistol, and a six-or-seven inch boot-knife. Short, curvy, didn’t look like she could swing the goddamn bat she was carrying. Not ideal, but shit around here was almost never ideal anyways. She had sounded committed over the intercom. Close enough, he figured. He’d just have to hope that she was as good as she seemed to think she was.

                Colter threw his arms up over his head to a chorus of cheers and snarls. As shit as he was as an OverBoss, at least he knew how to rile up a crowd. Gage looked out over the crowd of raiders, praying that they had the damn sense to be patient. Nisha eyed him from her seat. He could feel her gaze, burning through him. There were a lot of moving pieces. If this skinny little nobody didn’t pull through for him, the whole Nuka World concept would go up in smoke and the gangs would flood the fuckin’ arena and tear Colter and each other apart here and now. Shit was all or nothing, which was not how he’d like to play this, ideally, but what in the hell else could they do? Give it a second. Just give it a second. Old Gage will deliver. Always does.

                Nobody would remember the first half of the match after everything shook out. Nobody.

                Colter had the upper-hand, but she didn’t seem to care if she took a bullet or two. She came right in close over and over—small and quick. Colter’s jacked-up power armor wasn’t built for maneuverability. She could dive in close, hit the wires on the suit with the watergun, and dance back out to pepper him with her pistol. Slow going, and she was going to be sore as hell in the morning from all the running around, but it was working. She had been chipping away at Colter’s armor for ten minutes. The gangs were antsy, but everyone wanted to see how this played out. Colter was just the right amount of shocked to lose his focus. It was looking good.

                He nearly choked on his heart when she dropped suddenly and slid between Colter’s legs only to spring back up behind him. She managed to duck the punch leveled at her, and hit the suit again with the watergun. It shorted and froze Colter in place. She should have reloaded her gun and shot, but she didn’t do that. She reached behind her back and grabbed for the wooden baseball bat, and swung the thing so hard into his side that it cracked and then splintered clean in half. There was a moment of stunned silence as Colter and the woman locked eyes and realized the huge fucking mistake she’d just made.

                Set match. It had been a good run at NukaWorld.                                                              

                She tucked and rolled to the side, hitting one of the broken bumper cars hard. Colter barreled towards her the second his suit rebooted and she scrambled onto her hands and knees and crawled under an overturned bumper car. She was out of sight for a solid minute until Colter got a good grip on the car, yanked the whole fucking kit-and-caboodle up into the air, and hucked it to the side. She wasn’t ready for him. She had the squirtgun in one hand, but by his count, she was still out of bullets. She hadn’t had enough time to reload. The suit shorted for just long enough for her to start backing herself away, frantically splitting her attention between Coulter, and the bullets in her hands. Gage could see it from here, her fingers were shaking as she slid bullets into the chamber. By the time Colter regained control of the suit, she was halfway across the arena and he was so furious he turned a shade of red Gage had never seen before.

                Red Eye squealed with delight over the radio, and Gage looked up at the radio box over the arena and swore he’d wring the little shit’s neck if he got the chance. His knuckles were white as he gripped the radio table for support.

                Colter caught up with the woman as she was trying to get out of the way and punched her square in the back so hard that she folded around his gauntlet, feet off the ground, and hit the floor face-first. Hair everywhere, sticking to her forehead in a mat of blood and dirt when she rolled over and scrambled backwards. Her back hit the wall. Looked like he had her cornered, but the damn fool was too busy grandstanding to finish her. He turned back to face the crowd, arms up. The responding jeers set Gage’s teeth on edge. He grabbed for the 10mm at his hip. If this went south, he wasn’t going out without a fight. That was for damn sure.

                She didn’t waste time. The second she got ahold of herself, she threw her whole body to the side, rolled, and took cover behind a stack of broken bumper cars. Colter laughed and rounded on her, but she was already hitting the suit with the watergun again, and the armor shorted. And this time, it shorted for a little longer.

                Gun up. Bullet one nicked his shoulder plate. Bullet two took it clean off. It skittered across the arena floor and the whole place fell dead silent. No one had managed to damage the suit like that before, and Colter was trapped inside it until it stopped shorting out. The next couple bullets sank into the skin of his shoulder. Power came back online and Colter was _pissed._

                Just a little further, princess. Just a little further.                                                                                             

                It was her speed that had him. She could run circles around Colter in his clunky suit, and Colter knew it. When she finally hit one of the cables with a bullet, Colter jumped ship and ejected from the suit, right before it shut down for good. He landed on his feet in front of her, bleeding bad from the shoulder she’d managed to shoot. Colter made a show of slipping brass knuckles onto his fists, cracking his neck. No armor now. The gangs lost their shit cheering, though Gage couldn’t tell if they were cheering for the woman, or just cheering out of sheer bloodlust.

                It was alright, though. She didn’t have much in the way of armor, but she’d been doing fine so far, and she still had the gun. Knife to a gunfight, right? Things were looking good until she dropped the gun with a clatter.

                Stupid fuckin’ bitch.                                                                                                                 

                He thought he was gonna have a goddamned heart attack. Red Eye was frothing at the mouth. The gangs were a screaming mass of adrenaline.

                Colter charged. She braced herself. When he got close, she ducked down low and slammed her shoulder into his chest. Colter faltered but bounced back fast and drove his fist into her side once, twice, three fucking times. There were short spikes on the ends of each knuckle. He was jabbing her full of holes. She twisted, hands clenching bloody skin. Her duster hadn’t protected her side much at all. Gage saw her knees give, but Colter held her up around the waist and kept on whaling on her. Just when it was getting hard to watch, Colter let go. She swayed and then hit the ground like a sack of raw meat. He stood over her, waiting. The first time she tried to get up, he kicked her hard, square in the chin. She lurched, but finally pulled herself up. Colter stepped forward into her space.

                Lightning fast, she spit blood into his face and, while he was wiping his eyes, lurched into him and threw him off balance. Colter was ready to fight back, but she was better. She sidestepped him when he charged, got around behind him, launched forward, and latched onto his back. Wrapped around him like a snake. Colter stumbled, but she locked her legs around his waist. He grabbed her jacket, but she got an arm around his neck and wrenched back hard. They staggered, this writhing, two-headed monster in the reddish light of the arena. She wound up with her other fist and punched him in the side of the head. He was turning purple. Finally, she snapped his head to the side so hard he lost balance and collapsed to his knees. Getting ahold of himself, he grabbed a fist full of her hair and yanked, but she held fast until he was choking, gasping for air. He threw himself onto his side and rolled to crush her, but she didn’t lose her grasp. There was blood everywhere. Gage doubted that she could even see at this point. Colter thrashed but gradually fell still, his hands slipping down from the arm around his throat. She held on for another whole minute while he jerked and twitched before letting go and kicking him off as best she could.

                Without hesitating, she clambered over his body on hands-and-knees, grabbed for the gun she’d tossed, and, sitting on the floor, shot him five times in the top of the head at point-blank range.

_Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang._

                The arena was silent. Even Red Eye didn’t have anything to say. She collapsed backwards onto the floor, chest heaving. Breathe-in, breathe-out. He could see her shaking from across the arena, but a win was a win.

                Long live the fucking queen.


	7. Alive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the first time since waking up in the future, Cori is alive.

                He was a wall. A wall of human, wrapped in what looked like something stripped off old Power Armor. Metal bars across his chest. Gun on his hip. A knife the length of her forearm on his thigh. Shaved head, except for the ridge of an ashy brown Mohawk. Sharp features—razor-edged nose, jawline that could cut steel, hard eyes. And he was half a foot taller than she was.

                The high was wearing down and now she was just shaking, nauseous, bleary-eyed, and achey. And a little cold? That one was a little surprising.

                Just like she was back in the court room—bright lights, a sea of murmurs, a judge, a jury, and an executioner. Only, instead of standing at her table with her notes and her briefcase, she was on trial and spattered head to foot in another man’s blood.

                Guilty.

                Her jury was blurred—she couldn’t see past the lights and the walls of chainlink fence. All she could see was the man, hands on his hips. Watching. He’d been saying something to the crowd, but her heart had been pounding too loud to figure out what. The static sound in her ears was fading a bit, but the human voices talking and shouting were still muffled. She felt like her veins were filled with cotton balls. Like she was under three feet of water.

                “Well, you comin’?”

                Good question.                                                                                                                                                                

                She could lay on the bloody floor of this godforsaken arena forever, or she could stand up and take a step. Like she’d been doing since she clawed her way out of the Vault. Cori pushed herself up and then accepted his hand when he offered it. The man nearly jerked her up off her feet. She dusted her jeans and took a breath.

                They were walking. People stared. The man had introduced himself, but she’d already forgotten ninety percent of what he’d said. Only one thought had stuck: she was in charge of this now. Not how she’d thought this day would go, but it wasn’t like she’d had a plan, either. Everything hurt—head-to-toe, and especially her stomach, where she’d been punched so many times she’d lost count. She was still bleeding badly; she could feel blood dripping down her side, oozing out of the holes in her shirt and coat. Cori leaned on the man’s arm when he would let her. How long had they been walking? Felt like hours. She was so tired, so so so tired.

                They finally made it up a lift where he practically had to carry her and the second they were out of sight, he scooped her up and set her down in a plush chair in the middle of this huge, windowed room overlooking the park. Long oval-ish space, with a bed up on a stage on one end, what looked like a kitchen on the other, and bar in the middle. Some old restaurant booths pressed up against the windows that walled the place in.

                “Ma’am? Hey, Boss? You listenin’?”

                “Huh?”

                “I _said_ are you listening? You’ll need to know this shit.”

                His face was sliding in and out of clarity. Breathing hard. She tried to focus, but then he grabbed her chin and tilted her head up to get a look at her.

                “Ah shit,” he mumbled. “You’re fuckin’ high, aren’t you?”

                She blinked.

                “Damnit.” He let go of her and crossed the room to grab an old world first aid kit. Clunky metal thing, like the one Nate had stuffed into his ruck before shipping out. The man crouched down in front of her and flipped the lid off the tin, rummaging around. “I don’t hold with sloppy shit like this, alright? If this is a habit of yours, you’re kicking it right now. Right fuckin’ now, before either of us gets our heads blown off. We understanding each other?”

                Well. Not like it was a habit, but she couldn’t get the words out. Was her tongue swollen? She had been more alert when he’d had her up and walking, but now it was all settling in, and she had made a terrible mistake. No doubt, she’d seen this in college. She’d overdosed.

                Cori tried to get his attention to tell him, but the man had already figured out something was wrong. He grabbed her arm, shoved her sleeve up, and shot her up with a syringe. Adictol. Two Adictol—he hit her with a second just after the first. Then a stim. Finally, after looking at her eyes for a minute, he got back up, grabbed a bottle of water, and thrust it into her hands.

                “No more of this shit. I need you alert.”

                She nodded, fighting with her hands to bring the water to her face. Now that she thought about it, she was parched. Throat and mouth so dry she felt like they were coated in sandpaper. A whole desert sitting in the pit of her gut, gusting up dust when she breathed. She drank the whole thing and then set her head back on the chair, letting the dizziness roll through. Just had to ride it out.

                No telling how long she sat there. The man kept bringing her water. She kept taking it one breath at a time. Eventually, the sun was setting. She threw up twice, and after the second time, he half-carried her onto the lift and back down to a public bathroom across from the fountain. Small. Dingy. Only one of the stalls still had a door. She could hear a generator chugging along over her head—sounded busted. Not like the cleaner-running ones Preston was setting up in settlements all over the ‘Wealth. Busted-ass raider junk. She hugged the toilet bowl, vomited one more time, and then tried to scrub her face as best as possible in the grimy sink. Worse than a Red Rocket bathroom, but she didn’t have enough energy to care.

                He was waiting outside the door when she finally emerged, took one look at her, and steered her back up to the windowed room up the lift. Now that she was a little more coherent, she could remember that this must have been that restaurant she’d always seen in the commercials. The expensive one, at the heart of Nukatown USA. Fizzle something or other. The thought made her lip twitch up. She’d always wanted to go.

                When they made it back to the room, he dropped her down into the chair again, sitting on the coffee table across from her.

                “Let’s try this again.” His voice was gruff, but at least it wasn’t loud. Her head pounded. “What do you remember?”

                “I killed that man. Coulter.” Felt like that had been days ago. The memories came back to her in snippets. Blood pounding. Aching. Fear. Adrenaline. Disorientation. And then the gunshots—the final gunshots as she put an end to the big guy with the brass knuckles.

                “Anything else?”                                                                                                                            

                She blinked a couple of times, and the man swore under his breath.     

                “Right then. You killed Coulter.” He talked to her slowly, like he was trying to talk to a child. “Like I said before, you killed the Overboss—you got his job. This is your outfit now.”

                Oh. Right.

                “My name’s Gage. You and me? We’ve got three gangs here to balance out. Pack. Operators. Disciples. We keep everyone balanced? We get a pay day. We don’t and they skin us alive and leave us for the deathclaws, if we’re lucky. Sound clear?”

                “Got it.”

                “You’d better. I don’t like repeating myself.” He grabbed for the med kit he’d left on the table and opened it back up, his eyes scanning up and down her frame. “This is your base, Fizztop. Can’t account for taste, but it has a nice view. I’ve got chems stashed in the desk, and Coulter had some old weapons lying around his workbench over there. You can take whatever once we get you patched up.”

                Oh yeah. She touched her side and her hand came away red. Right.  

                “For now, though, we have to close up all those holes Coulter poked in you.” He set some gauze down on the table and picked out another stim. Was it possible to overdose on stims? She remembered some daytime talkshow arguing about it lifetimes ago. “Sit forward and take your shirt off so I can get a better look.”

                She might have been embarrassed if Gage hadn’t just watched her vomit up four granola bars and some snack cakes while coming down from a chem high. She slipped her coat off. What was she wearing? Oh yeah. The fatigues from the church. Dead man’s clothes. She pulled the shirt over her head, and then her tank top. Down to her bra, pants, and boots. Gage crouched down next to the chair and got to work disinfecting the ragged holes in her side. Coulter had mostly missed her ribs, so nothing was broken from what she could feel, but that meant that he had been pummeling the soft bits. The side of her stomach looked like it was half bruise and half swiss cheese. A little better when Gage cleaned the blood away, but not much. He jabbed another stim into her side and then stood her up so he could walk a length of gauze around her like a corset. Not all that gentle, but gentler than she had expected him to be. He must have done this before.

                When she was wrapped up, Gage fished through the clothes sitting up on a stage, on the dresser next to a broken-down king-sized bed. Bed. Oh god, she was going to get to sleep in a bed for the first time in days. Her knees were weak.

                “I’ll find you some clothes and armor in the morning. We’ll get you some guns too. For now, here.”

                He handed her what must have been one of Coulter’s old shirts, some boxer shorts, and a pair of Nuka world-branded sweats. Changing out of one dead man’s clothes into another’s. She tried not to think about it. Gage turned his back and she changed. She passed on the shorts (no way those were clean), cinched the pants down with the drawstring, and pulled the massive Cappy t-shirt over her head. She walked past Gage and flopped down on the bed.

                “Alright, then,” he nodded. “My room is through those doors. Rest up—we’ve got a lot of planning to do in the morning.”

                She nodded, not even sure what to say. The door shut behind him.       

                She didn’t think that she’d be able to sleep that first night at Fizztop. She was out in seconds. Didn’t wake until something jolted her out of a coma when the moon was high. She woke up disoriented—a rush of panic under her skin until her brain recalibrated and processed that she was in the restaurant from the amusement park. Her new room.

                She peeled back the blanket and threw her feet over the edge of the bed until they met the wooden stage. The air was cool. It took a minute for her eyes to adjust, but faint reddish light glowed through the tall windows from the campfires below. Weirdly…pretty. Which was not a word she thought she’d get to use again. Pretty. In its own way. She sighed, and it was like the whole place was dead silent for a moment—so quiet that she could hear and feel the faint rushing of blood under her skin. Uniquely alive. A gust of wind scurried through the room, dancing over her skin, and the whole building creaked. And why wouldn’t it creak? The place was over two-hundred years old, she reminded herself. She was over two-hundred years old.

                In all her time in the wasteland, she hadn’t allowed herself a minute to really stop and think about it.

                This wasn’t her blue, military-subsidized suburban dream home, and she didn’t know how to feel about that. Not quite bad, but not good either? Not like she’d been too invested in the house, the whole domesticity thing, and the weird little life she’d carved for herself, but it had been _hers._ And nothing about Nuka World was even remotely hers. Her life was gone. Finito. Didn’t even leave behind ashes to rise up out of, really.

                Well. This wasn’t the first time she had to start from scratch, and it wouldn’t be the last. Thirty-three years (give or take a few hundred), and she’d learned how to make do.

                Distant whooping and hollering floated up from the camp a few stories down as people drank themselves deep into the night. Who was it who lived close again? It had been so hard to pay attention while they were walking here after the fight, but bits and pieces were coming back now that she was at least sober. The Zoo was out by the Market. Then it was the money-grubbing ones by the Arcade. The twins. So the ones right by her must be the masked maniacs. Great. She was bunked next to the sadists. Peachy.  

                She dropped back onto the mattress and pulled her blanket up to her chin. The blanket smelled like something less than pleasant, but she couldn’t pinpoint it right now. Sweat? Something musty? Mothballs? First act as Overboss after bathing and scrounging up clothes: get some clean fucking linens. She snorted. Well, life was garbage if you couldn’t find the humor in it. Maybe she’d ask Gage tomorrow anyways.

                Her eyes had just slid shut again when she heard another creak. Like someone stepping wrong on the floor. She opened her eyes just as the bed depressed under the weight of someone wearing a full face-mask and holding a knife.

                Bunked next to the psychos.

                She wanted to scream, but the sound that came out was a little less than a raspy whimper. The smallest, saddest sound she’d ever heard. The intruder shifted, one leg over hers, holding her down, hands on either side of her arms.

                “This is the bitch who beat Colter?” Male voice. Low. Dangerous. Slurred? “Fuckin’ pathetic.”

                She couldn’t move. She’d been through Basic for the military. She had taken four separate self-defense courses at the Rec center through high school and college, and she couldn’t remember a single maneuver that would get her out of this. The guy wasn’t even that heavy. She could throw him off if she was quick about it. But it was like she was rooted to the mattress beneath her—her fingers and toes growing into the fabric.

                “I’ll cut your throat before I scalp you so you can’t scream. Then I’ll fly your fucking hair like a flag. No one messes with Nisha.” He shifted and set the knife at her throat. She could practically hear the grin in his voice. She was acutely aware of the fact that she was sweating? Her vision was blurry too, and her mouth felt dry. A pang in the pit of her gut—sharp regret. A soul-deep urge. Don’t let it end this way. Cold creeping at her fingertips when she dug her nails into the mattress underneath her. Don’t let it end this way. Faintness. Lightheaded. A dull roaring in her ears. And strangely, a thrill. Adrenaline, pure and bright, the edge of a blade. _Don’t let it end this way._ It was like she had never felt her body until this very moment, waking up to every sense and nerve lit up in primal dread. Overwhelming.

                The sound that came out of her was just that. Primal and overwhelming. It wasn’t so much a scream as a roar; it came from the very core of her existence and radiated out of her, ear-shattering in the night.

                The intruder was a little staggered. Not enough to shift, but enough to stare her directly in the eye. See her for the first time. She shoved up hard—just hard enough to stagger him—and then kicked. Pulled her knees up to her chest and kicked out hard. And when he pushed her ankles aside, she threw her body forward against his, shoving and screaming and hitting and flailing. Fighting. 

                It all happened fast. The door to Gage’s room slid open. The sound caught the man’s attention. She shoved. Gage raised a shotgun and fired once. The intruder collapsed, burying her. She couldn’t stop screaming. The weight lifted; Gage hauled the dead body off her and it landed on the floor with a heavy _thud._ A hand clasped over her mouth. She bit down as hard as she could until she broke salty skin and tasted blood. Gage yelped in pain.

                “Fuckin’— _Boss.”_ He grabbed her shoulders and jerked her upright so hard her neck snapped back and her teeth rattled. “Boss, it’s just me.”

                She stared for a moment as the sensation ebbed, tensed muscles unclenching, heat whooshing back through her with dizzying force. Her mouth clamped shut. And then, when her lungs squeezed, she opened her mouth again and gasped for air. Black splotches bloomed on the edges of her vision until her brain set itself back to rights and Gage’s face jumped into sharp focus; she could see every pore and furrow and freckle. He looked _alarmed,_ that was for sure. She almost laughed.

                “He…”                                                                                                                                                                                  

                “Boss, he’s dead. It’s done.”

                She clamped her mouth back shut and nodded, refusing to look at the ground. Words weren’t working. Her eyes shut and she took one steadying breath. Then another. What had she learned in yoga? Diaphragmatic breaths. In for five seconds, out for five. In for ten, out for ten. In for fifteen, out for fifteen. When she finally regained control, she opened her eyes. Gage was still there, holding her up by her arms, more confused than before.

                “Thank you.”

                “No worries.” That was not what he was thinking at all. She could see it in the set of his brows. Lots of worries. All the worries.

                “Who is he?”

                “How the fuck should I know?” Gage looked down at the body on the floor, but it was missing most of its head. Apparently, his mask only covered the front of his head, not the back. Idiot. When Gage kicked the body over, Corinne noticed that he was only wearing half his armor, and his shirt was buttoned wrong. He’d missed a button at the bottom. Huh. So definitely drunk then.

                “Boss?” Gage leaned in. She looked up at him. “ _Boss_?”                                           

                “Yeah?”

                “Zoned out on me there. Did you hear what I said?”                                                                

                He’d said something? She blinked.

                “Right. Probably not.” He stood back up and looked down at the body on the floor. “We should make a message out of him. We can string him up outside as a reminder.”

                “We should?”

                “Unless you want other assholes comin’ up here to try their luck, yeah.” He folded his arms over his chest. “And if anyone asks, _you_ killed the bastard, and he didn’t stand a fucking chance. We clear?”

                “Crystal.”

                Gage nudged the body with the toe of his boot, face sour. Not revolted. Just irritated, for the most part. After a moment of quiet, he stepped down from the stage and rounded to the tool chest in the corner. After rustling around for a minute, he came back with a length of rope. He wrapped it around the dead man’s chest and shoulders in sloppy loops, and then pulled tight and dragged the body over to the lift. She watched from her bed as he leveraged the body over the side of the deck that faced the knife-maniac’s hideout and secured the rope to the deck, leaving the body dangling. She should be more disgusted. But she wasn’t. She kicked the bloody blankets off the bed and wrapped herself in her coat. None of it felt real, like she was watching a movie play out in the dark. After he strung up the body, he turned to the lift’s control panel, lifted up the metal cover, and unplugged one of the wires.

                “There. No one’s getting up here without walking right past me.” He looked her up and down. “You alright?”

                “Fine.”                                                                                                                                                    

                “Good. I’ll head back to bed, then.”

                There was still blood on the floor. A sudden, acidic panic shot up from the pit of her gut as he turned towards the door.

                “Wait! Gage, wait.”

                Gage turned around and looked her in the eye. She had just met this man today. She had known him for maybe a couple of hours at most, and she’d spent some of those hours in fight-or-flight mode, riding an adrenaline high so intense she couldn’t see straight, and a chemical high that had probably killed more than half of her brain cells. She had no idea what he was like, really. No idea if he was any better than the man who had threatened to scalp her. But they had to be in this together. The sensation had dulled, but she was awake now, and it felt like there were snakes under her skin, writhing and twisting. Alive. So weirdly, sharply alive. And she desperately, _desperately_ did not want to be alone.

                “Gage, could you stay here?” Her voice sounded small and level. She couldn’t get her tone to cooperate. Nothing sounded the way she felt; it was like she was outside of herself and was hyper aware of how deadpan and vacant she looked in contrast to that strange restless feeling in her veins. “In the room, I mean.”

                After a minute looking at her, he nodded, crossed the room, and plopped down in the easy chair she’d sat in earlier, a step down from the stage. Back against the window so that he could see the lift, the door, and her at all times. He laid the gun across his lap.

                “You’re the Boss.”

                That’s right. She _was_ the Boss.


	8. Settling In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Boss is all about her niceties.

                Well. He had been hoping for something different, and this new Boss sure as hell was different. He woke up in the chair across from her bed to find her lying in bed, staring hard at the ceiling. When he said good morning, she jolted up like he’d woken her from a dream and just looked at him for a moment. Her eyes were bloodshot and her mouth was slack. Then she came-to and said, cheery as all get-out, “good morning!”

                Fucking weird.

                She wandered around her room at Fizztop for a bit in Coulter’s old clothes, muttering to herself. She dug through the desk and the toolbox, opened and closed every drawer on every dresser and cabinet, and looked through all the junk under the bar. Piled up some miscellaneous crap in the center of the room, in front of the lift. Broken bottles, chipped plates, some of Colter’s old clothes, and a bunch of garbage. The place looked real empty when she was done. She moved some of Colter’s old shirts and put them in a pile on the desk. She grabbed all the unopened beers, colas, and food. Stacked everything edible in the kitchen in the corner. Asked about sheets and blankets at one point, but interrupted herself to start rambling on about soap.

                “We’ll have to move these old booths. Don’t know why you guys kept them around for so long.” She pointed to the wall of booths lining the thick windows. “I’ll keep the bar, though. Always wanted a bar in the house.”

                What fuckin’ nonsense?

                Then she set to it. Started pushing all the booths into the middle, on top of her pile of junk. She got through one booth and a broken seat by herself before noticing that he was just watching. She shot him a look—real fuckin’ brave of her to get sassy with him after he’d saved her life the night before—and jerked her head towards the tables. Worked, though, because he followed her lead and started ripping booths out of the floor. Only one or two of them put up a fight, but they were able to find some old sledgehammers and axes in Coulter’s tools that took care of that. He’d never seen the room cleared like that—the spots on the carpet where the old booths had sat were bright blue and pristine next to the faded grey-black of the carpet in the rest of the room. Made him wonder what the hell had stained the carpets so fuckin’ bad. Huh. Foul. 

                Took them half the damn day to get everything down the lift. She sent him down first so she could load the lift up with crap, send it down to him, and have him dump it somewhere. He made a ring of scrap around the door to Fizztop. No one used that entrance anyway—the old lobby was practically a death trap. But it never hurt to have an extra wall to take cover behind. Waste not, want not. The number of times she sent crap down to him was just fucking astounding—every bit of trash and broken furniture landed in heaps around the base of Fizztop. He set the clothes with anything salvageable in one of the old shops, in case anyone could use them. Finally, she sent the lift back down empty, calling him back up. When he got to the top of the rig, he found her setting up lanterns on the bar and pushing couches and tables against the windows, where the booths had been. Seemed like a waste of time to him, so he stayed out of her way while she worked.

                Once she exhausted herself moving shit around and tidying up, she wandered back into his room, and he followed her because there was no telling what she’d do. She took one look around, saw his bed in the corner, and nodded.

                “Your room, then?”

                “Yeah, Boss. What of it?”

                “I’ll use your bathroom, then, since I don’t have one.”

                “What?”

                “You have a shower here, right?”

                “A _what_?”

                She stopped moving around, which was good, because she was making him dizzy. “A shower. You have a shower here?”

                “I guess.” He glanced over at the abandoned bathroom in the corner. “No running water, though.”

                “What?”

                This conversation was going nowhere fast.

                “Boss,” he said, looking her in the eye. “I told you yesterday. What part of “no power” didn’t you get?”

                She blinked a few times before sighing “right.” Did she even remember talking to him yesterday? He’d walked her through the gangs and parks as best he could, but she’d seemed real calm and level for someone who’d fallen into the Gauntlet and inherited a park, even after he’d sobered her up. She probably hadn’t heard a damn word coming out of his mouth—what with the shock, and all.

                “Let’s talk for a minute, alright?” He looked her in the eye and she focused. “Long and short of it? Take back the parks, turn on the power, keep the peace. If you don’t, we both get gutted. Clear?”

                “Clear.”

                “Good. I ain’t gonna explain it again.”

                “Fine.” She looked around the room again. “How do you lot bathe?”

                “We got two bathrooms up and running. The one in the old medic’s station has an employee shower that still works.”

                “Good, then. In that case, I need clothes, clean sheets, and a shower.”

                “You got bigger shit to worry about.”

                Her eyes bored into his like she could look straight through him if she tried hard enough.

                “Yes. I do.” Her tone was hard as a brick wall. “And I’ll worry about that _after_ I get clothes. Clean sheets. And a shower. Clear?”

                “Clear.” He bit back a nasty remark. Fine. Let her primp. Whatever. So long as, after that, she started working and getting shit sorted.

                She belted her holster around her waist and loaded her pistol. The market should have some of her niceties. Coulter had left behind a shitton of caps, so he scooped the lot into his ruck to take her to get her shit.

                She haggled like no one he’d ever met. Ruthless. Wouldn’t let anyone else get a word in edgewise until she’d made her point and worked them over. Crisp and polite, but unyielding.

                She bought four pairs of jeans, a goddamned skirt, a button-up shirt, some t-shirts and undershirts, underclothes, more socks than any one person objectively needed, make-shift armor, bullets, relatively clean sheets, a blanket, a towel, a shitton of soap (all the soap in the damn park, pretty much), a hairbrush, three pillows, and a fucking tube of lipstick. Frivolous shit.

                She didn’t want to be left alone in the public showers, so he ended up posted outside, holding her mountain of junk. She took her sweet-ass time. When she finally did step out, she was wearing an outfit put together from the clothes she’d bought and she smelled like a field of flowers. She brushed her fingers through her hair and started towards Fizztop.

                The room looked so different now that she’d pulled out all the tables and stripped the place. Empty. She changed her sheets first, since the old ones were stained with blood from the dipshit Disciple he’d had to splatter last night. She threw the old sheets out, down past the body that was still tied to the lift platform. Put away her clothes in the cabinet next to the bed. Stored the soaps and towels. Set the lipstick on the desk.

                Day one and she’d done some interior decorating, some shopping, and some relaxing. Sure. Settle in. Get comfortable. But do all that _after_ fixing the immediate problem, damnit.

                When she seemed satisfied, she sat down on the bed and looked up at him.

                “Alright.” Her tone was level and calm. She slipped on the blue coat she’d been wearing the day before. “Let’s go meet the gang leaders.”


	9. Violent, Profitable, and Free

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cori makes the rounds at Nuka World and starts assuming her place as the Overboss.

                The Gangs were a mess. Just a complete and utter mess.

                The Disciples were closest, so she started with them. They lived in an old ride, and if Corinne never had to set foot on their turf again, she’d be all the happier for it. The floor was sticky. Just sticky, everywhere, and she couldn’t figure out why but she was almost certain it wasn’t because someone had spilled a soda. One of the first things she noticed was that there was an actual honest-to-god pile of dead bodies. And not old-world skeletons, though she did see some of those scattered around as well. No. Whole, rotting, actively decomposing human bodies. The reek of it alone was enough to make her eyes water. It was better the further she got inside though, as the fresh kills were closest to the door and not scattered throughout, thankfully. But the rest of the place was dark, dank, and littered with people wearing full metal masks and holding knives. They were in their own home. Why the hell they saw fit to have their goddamn knives out was beyond her. She and Gage passed all manner of would-be psych studies on their way up the massive ramp in the middle. It was structured like the weirdest apartment complex, or maybe a very grim beehive. Nisha matched the place toe to tip, with narrowed, bloodthirsty eyes and sharp lips like a tear in her face. Her rules were simple: don’t fuck with the Disciples and they won’t fuck with you. Alright then.

                The Operators weren’t a whole lot better. Better put-together maybe, but that was about it. At least she knew she could buy them. The Disciples seemed like they would stir up trouble for the sake of a fight, but the Operators would keep their unit together unless there was a lucrative reason not to. They were crammed into the old parlor house, with people in patched-up suits and scraps of armor draped over chairs, leaning against curtained walls, and watching her from over chipped tea cups. There was a woman in a faded tuxedo on a chaise lounge, drinking wine out of a plastic Cappy cup. There was something a little grim about people trying that hard to hold onto the trappings from a world they had only ever seen in pictures, but she wasn’t about to share her insight with the man who adjusted his bowtie in a broken mirror and was strapped with at least four separate guns, from what she could see. The leaders of this outfit also matched their set pretty well. Twins, from what she saw, but the woman was clearly in charge. William lurked behind her like a quiet threat while Mags did the talking. Right to the point. The Operators make valuable allies, if their value is acknowledged monetarily. Food for thought.

                The Pack looked like what you’d get if you let a bunch of frat boys decorate an arena. Junk everywhere, people napping on sleeping bags and dirty mattresses outside in the sun, banners and streamers, face paint, probably had moonshine somewhere if she asked. Their corner of the park was loud like a dorm too, with everyone hooting and hollering like a bunch of drunk frat-y assholes. Their leader was a little quicker—a huge barrel-chested guy, the kind she would have liked in college—but still not the brightest bulb she’d met. No mind for tact or manipulation. If Mason hit you, it’d be with the flat of his hand and not the full force of an organized gang. Wearing a beard, some face paint, a pair of truly vile-looking pants, and nothing much else. He bared his teeth. The Pack is all about respect. The Pack is loyal. The Pack doesn’t take shit. Bla bla bla. One woman over by the dog-fighting pit (and that was another thing—the fucking dogfighting pit) was puking the contents of her stomach into a trashcan while three other very drunk raiders laughed. Charming.

                She could sum it up, sitting at one of the dusty tables at the Market. The Disciples want to keep Nukaworld violent, the Operators want it profitable, and the Pack want it free. Violent, profitable, and free. Probably not the slogan John-Caleb Bradberton had in mind when he’d built the place, but the best laid plans of mice and men, she supposed…

                “What’d you think?” Gage dropped down onto the stool across from her and slid a Nuka Cola her way. Cherry. She’d liked Cherry before the war.

                What did she think?

                She thought that she was in over her head.

                She thought she was going to get her neck snapped.

                She thought that the next time someone came up to try and kill her in her sleep, they’d be successful.

                She thought that she was in no way qualified for this.

                She thought that she was surrounded by people who were tougher, stronger, and more brutal than her, and that there was no way in hell she would ever be even half as ruthless of the smallest and weakest of them.

                She thought she wasn’t going to make it four days here.

                She thought that she never should have stepped into that fucking vault—that if she had known what her life was going to become, she would have walked into the blast and bathed in the radiation.

                “It’s fine,” she said.

                “Fine?”

                “Fine. Just fine. Lots to consider, I guess.” She sipped down her cola, letting the flat, syrupy goop slide down her throat. At least it was lukewarm, which is just the _ideal_ temperature for a soda. Fucking perfect. Across from where they were sitting, a clump of Pack raiders gathered under the shade of a tarp cabana. None of them were older than twenty-five and they could all probably still kill her if they wanted to.

                “Yeah, well. Don’t let them scare you. No one wants to risk the peace right now. We do our jobs right and it’ll stay that way.” He bit into a carrot he’d grabbed at the market before handing it her way. Like she was just supposed to be comfortable sharing all those mouth germs like besties at the mall and not two veritable strangers sitting in the middle of a ticking time-bomb.

                On second thought, sure, why the hell not. She snapped off a bit of the carrot, but it tasted like fucking sawdust.

                Taste aside, she was hungry. When was the last time she’d eaten? The past few days had been a blur with all the fighting and stress. It was already like months had passed between now and the moment she’d left the skinny merc kid alone by a roadside. Wow, what must he and her Wasteland contacts think? First she all but falls out of the sky, then she’s off the radar and gone forever—just vanished. Then again, with how many people wander off into the woods and die, maybe no one would so much as bat an eyelash. She wondered if her freak son still had all that technology spying on her. Could he see her all the way out here? Sitting in a cesspool?

                Ultimately, she supposed that didn’t matter.

                But she _was_ still really hungry.

                “We stopping for lunch?” She asked.

                “We can. You still have caps from Coulter’s stash.” He rubbed his chin. “But don’t think that will last you forever after all the shit you bought.”

                She wasn’t about to go through life without clean underwear and some soap, so he could take that fucking attitude and ram it as far up his ass as it would go. She didn’t tell him that, though. She needed allies more than dignity right now. She shot him a look and he excused himself to get them something more substantial than a single carrot.

                That was when those idiot Pack kids started eying her in earnest. Gage was a juggernaut, but Cori? Cori was small, largely untested, and had a target on her back after killing Coulter. The Pack respects power, so of course they’d push her.

                The oldest was gangly and freckled, wearing ram’s skull like a helmet. Short one was all bulk—arms thick as steel girders. His friend was just as strong but easily the tallest, and wore a wolf mask over her hoodie. Littlest one was the runt, but easily the best armored. They didn’t know what to make of her, and she didn’t know what to make of them.

                “You the new Boss?” Bastardized Boston accent—something learned from Silver Shroud reruns and old radio jingles. The gangly one who spoke must have been the leader. He stepped forward.

                “Yes.” She put on her best prosecutor’s voice and leveled a withering stare at the runt of the group. Predictable. He backed up a few steps.

                The gangly one didn’t seem to notice. He stepped a little closer. Corinne stood up to her full height, which was still two inches shorter than this kid. Now that he was in her space, she could see that he was probably a little younger than she thought. She’d pegged him as around twenty-five, but he was probably closer to nineteen.

                “Some of us were wondering what the hell was so special about you.”                                                

                “Well it wasn’t “some of you” who killed Coulter, now was it?” She crossed her arms over her chest. Gage was over by the counter, but he’d turned around to watch, hand on his gun. He wasn’t stepping her way yet, though. She couldn’t tell if he didn’t want to escalate things, didn’t think the situation warranted it, or just plain didn’t care if a punk kid with something to prove tried to tear in her two. She really hoped it was the former.

                The gangly guy’s cronies hung back, watching. He circled around her, making one full rotation. She didn’t let her eyes follow him. He leaned in, and she refused to let herself lean back. Starting him dead in the eyes when he was less than three inches from her face. His breath smelled like cola, cram, and cigarettes.

                He got around behind her then and leaned in over her shoulder.

                “Looks to me like just about anyone coulda taken Couler. Looks to me like you just got lucky.” She could hear the leer in his tone. “Think you’ll get lucky again?”

                There were so many different things that threat could mean, all of them bad.

                Over. Her. Head. She’d known it from the start. She was going to get herself killed, and not even by someone important. Not even for a good reason. She couldn’t see Gage now, but he sure as hell wasn’t here, helping her. It was just her and the Market. No one even batted an eye. Raiders bought guns and groceries while this kid threatened the OverBoss in broad daylight. She was going to die, and it wasn’t going to be quick and painless.

                She hadn’t been cut out for this. She’d been a lawyer, damnit. A lawyer. She’d sat at a desk all day with her fine-tip pen. She’d argued, not killed.

                But then, she had killed to protect herself since then, hadn’t she?

                Her hand was on her gun. The kid was still in her space; he hadn’t seen her reach for her holster, and his friends weren’t paying enough attention. They were looking for something, looking around, but not at her. Could she shoot a kid? 

                Who the fuck was she kidding. Of course she could.

                She’d always had a mean streak in her. It was why she’d become a lawyer in the first place—to be around people who wouldn’t flinch when she bared her teeth. She was _born_ for this, and for better or worse, there was no denying that now. She was gonna shoot this little asshole and teach him and his buddies a lesson, even if it killed her.

                Baser impulses, Nate had once said. She was “in touch with her baser impulses.” It was the English major in him. Well, she’d find out just how _base_ she could go—just fucking watch.

                She pulled the revolver off her hip and aimed it down. Without even looking, she pulled the trigger. _Ka-chunk_ , _bang!_ It all happened so fast. The hand came off her shoulder and his friends focused back on her and then on their friend. A yowl of pain. Movement. Scrambling, hands and knees, to get away from her. A small chaos.

                She whipped around to see Gage behind her, leaning on a table much closer than she’d thought. Waiting for her to decide what she was going to do. Gage looked her dead in the eye, unblinking. Galvanizing. Finish it.

                She turned back. The taller Pack raider had helped her friend up off the ground. The hole in the kid’s boot was close to the toe. She had probably shot off the tip of his middle toe, and there was blood bubbling up and onto the ground. Not serious, but serious enough. She hadn’t had a lot of experience with Wasteland medicine, but she doubted that they had the resources to properly fix up a toe that had been shot off. She was lucky she’d even hit him, since she hadn’t aimed.

                “Do you want to touch me again? Because I have five more bullets before I have to reload, and you only have four more toes on that foot.”

                The man from the Pack spit on the ground, but to the side. Disrespectful, but he didn’t spit on _her_ , so she was probably a little closer to being respected, at least. It was a start, and a start was better than nothing.

                “I want you patched up and on guard duty, patrolling the perimeter of Nukatown for the night shift.”

                Did they have shifts? Or a watch? Most settlements did, but these were raiders. They _were_ the thing that went bump in the night, for the most part. Whether he thought it was strange or not, he took the punishment. He’d end up walking miles on a severely broken toe. His buddies outnumbered her, but they saw something—maybe it was Gage standing behind her, maybe it was just her—and thought better of sticking around. Message received loud and clear. Don’t fuck with the Boss.

                When she looked back at Gage, he just nodded and then sat right back down to serve up the noodles he’d brought over. No need to talk about it. Just doing what one does in this situation, then.

 

                That night, she dreamed about the life she had left behind for the first time in a long time. In the dream, she walked through her old house. Nate was in the livingroom with Shaun. Codsworth buzzed around the kitchen, making dinner. Some part of her brain realized that this was more a memory than a dream. This looked just like one of the last times she’d come home from work before the bombs dropped. Nate’s dogtags were on the counter; he never wore them at home. Shaun was teething on a bag of frozen peas, a very “Nathan” solution if she ever saw one. She stood there in the doorway for a minute.

                “Hey there stranger.” Oh god she remembered what his voice sounded like now. Light. Topical and charming—a voice made for jokes and smooth pick-up lines. It was the reason she’d fallen in love with him in the first place. She’d forgotten that. There had been honest love between them at some point but it had gotten lost in the shuffle with the step-stool from his mother and all their wedding photos. At some point down the line, love had stopped being the reason they went to bed together each night. They stayed together out of solidarity. Neither of them wanted the life they were living, but they were out of options and in this together. Part of her missed the hell out of having a partner in crime.

                “Hey there.”

                “It’s been a wild ride, hasn’t it, pumpkin?”

                She sat down on the couch beside him. Baby Shaun barely registered her; he was too intent on the peas.

                “You know I hate it when you call me pumpkin, _sugar.”_

                Nate laughed and said “whatever you say, dumpling.”                                                                                 

                She leaned against the arm of the couch—they’d fought over this damn couch at the store for what, twenty minutes? But she’d won. She’d compromised and given him the blue appliances, but she had her plush, ruby-red couch. Their house was as much of a mess as they were as people, but it worked.

                “Hard day at work?”

                She looked back up and the scene shifted. It was Shaun now. Adult Shaun—the sixty-something sociopath. Sitting on the floor where baby Shaun had been. Nate was gone, but the house was still perfect. Adult, post-apocalypse Shaun in her beautiful hodge-podge modern living room. She stared for a moment, but the dream passed before she had the chance to even think about it.

                Finally, she was back in the Institute, faced with the kid. Not her real kid, the little one her real son had built to lure her in. The four-year-old who had cried when she’d tried to rescue him all those months ago. Who she’d scared half to death, pounding on the walls of his little glass box like a woman possessed, trying to break him out. She’d gone through hell, high water, and her whole supply of Radaway to get to him and he just cried like she was going to kill him. Like she was the big bad monster from his nightmares. That was when she’d met her real son. When he’d told her about his decoy, kept in a five-by-three foot glass prison with nothing but a bed and one single educational book he probably couldn’t even read yet. Or hell. Maybe he could, because he was a robot, and her son could have programmed him to do or be anything. Even though he didn’t program the synth kid to so much as recognize her.

                She woke up in a panic, gasping for air. Across the room, she heard Gage call her name, but she couldn’t catch a breath.

                He wasn’t real. She kept having to remind herself. He wasn’t real. He was slapped together with wires and silicone and who knows what else. He was created to stagger her. He was the bait. The check to see if she really wanted to meet her child and could go the distance to find him, even though her real son could have teleported her in at any time. The synth kid was nothing more than metal and plastic.

                Gage was by her bedside, checking in since she’d shot up out of bed hyperventilating. She waved him away, took a slug of her water, and tried to settle back to sleep.

                No matter how she tried to get back to sleep that night, she couldn’t shake that little synth Shaun out of her head.


	10. No Time Like the Present

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to shape up and ship out.

                “Focus, damnit.” He slapped his hand down onto the table to get her attention, because if he didn’t startle her out of her skin every two minutes, she’d forget where she was and start gazing off into space. Fuckin’ weird, but so far things had gone better than they could’ve, so he wasn’t gonna go complaining.

                “We can start down here at the Safari, come up to the Gulch, and then up to the Galactic Zone. After that, we head back here to regroup before hitting the last two. Sound good?”

                “Sure,” she nodded. “Do we know what we’re up against?”                                         

                “Not hardly.” Gage straightened out, staring down at the map on the table. He’d marked it up good, but it was still just one of those shitty paper maps he’d found in the old office. Way back, he had approached each territory with a stealth boy and a pen to see what they were up against when it still looked like Coulter was going to get his shit together, but he’d barely made it a step or two into each park before turning tail. And that intel was over a year old now, since he hadn’t had the time to go looking for updates since. No telling what was out there now.

                “I looked at each park a while back. Some ferals, critters, and old bots mostly, but that was a long time ago.” He pointed to the map, finger jabbing into the paper somewhere between the Safari and the Bottling Plant. “No one has any idea what’s there now because no one wants to risk taking a look.”

                Corinne leaned back in her chair. The desk was scattered with pens and maps and paper, but she looked right sitting there. More right than Coulter ever had. He supposed she was starting to settle into the gig, which was good because a week of getting her footing was plenty enough. Morning light filtered in through the windows at Fizztop, flooding the room in gold. Without all Coulter’s junk filling the place up, it was bright, open, and looked almost new. If she could be that for the parks, they’d be in good shape.

                “How big are the parks?” She bit her bottom lip. The paper maps didn’t have a whole lot of helpful detail—made everything look about the same size, and marked the parks based on their rides, which wasn’t helpful.

                “Depends.” He jabbed a finger at the map. “Gulch has this bigass mountain in the back that takes up most of the ground space, so it is pretty much the smallest. Galactic Zone was the biggest, if I remember right, followed by Kiddie Kingdom. Safari was too overgrown to see into so I don’t know what we’re looking at size-wise there. Bottling Plant is all inside a big building.”

                “How long should each park take to clear?”                                                                      

                “I’m hoping not more than a day or two, but who knows?”                         

                She frowned but didn’t comment on that. After a long moment, she sat up a little straighter and said “so, when do we rally?”

                “Rally?”

                “The gangs.” She tapped her fingers on the map. “How many should we take? Ten from each gang for starters? More?”

                “Ten from—Boss, we’re doing this alone, you and me.”              

                “What?” She looked him dead in the eye, frown tugging on the corner of her lip.

                “No one’s helping us but _us._ They’re raiders. They’re lazy as hell. If you ask ‘em, they’ll just say that you’re the Boss and you oughta prove it.”

                She coulda cut him in half with how sharp that stare was. Lips pressed together in a hard line, chin raised defiantly, spine straight. She let out a little breath through her nose. Her tone was ice.

                “So we’re alone in this?”

                “Yeah. We are.”

                “No backup from the people this will actually benefit?”

                “That’s what I just said.”

                She drummed her fingers on the desk. “That’s bullshit.”

                Well. She wasn’t wrong.                       

                “Look, Boss, these are raiders. They do what they want and they don’t “chip in” even if it helps everyone long-term. We’re lucky we have them cooperating as much as they do.”

                Her face didn’t soften.

                “Boss, someone has to be the adult around here and get shit done.”

                She sat back in her seat and muttered “fine.”

                He didn’t see why she was being difficult about it. She’d stepped up just fine so far—dawdling in the marketplace not counted—and had really seemed like she was fitting in. Hell, she already had the Pack wrapped around her finger after showing the new recruits who was Boss. The Pack stuck together, sure, but there was nothing they respected more than a show of force and she’d given them that right out the gate. The fight with Coulter had been close, but if he’d learned anything watching her, it was that she had it in her to survive. What was the big deal if they didn’t get back-up? Fewer assholes to get in the way, as he figured it.

                “We’re going to die, you and me, you know that right?” Her tone was so acidic he could feel his boots melting to the floor.

                “No, we ain’t.”

                “If you say so.” Corinne stood up and paced over to the windows by the makeshift living room. She looked out at the horizon for a moment, hands behind her back, and then turned around to face him. Her eyes flicked up to his, bright and dark at the same time, the deep brown of earth mixed with something almost green. Flecked with gold. She stood there for a long moment, bathed in the bright morning light, casting bold shadows on the carpet. He didn’t want to look away—got the sudden sense that it was like staring down a wild dog. Look away and it goes for the throat. Break eye-contact and it senses weakness. But it wasn’t just that. There was something compelling as all hell about her and that something started in those eyes and radiated out through every tense line of her body, something he couldn’t put a name to. He knew it then; she’d either be the best thing that had ever happened to Nukaworld, or the worst. No way to know which it would be until it was too late.

                She turned and climbed the three steps to the stage and her bed, gathering up her ruck and stuffing clothes from the bureau into it. Gage shook out his shoulders and untensed. Packing. Right.

                He grabbed his ruck from its space by the door and ducked into his room. Spare drawers, extra socks, a shirt, water, jerky, chems, medkit, bandages, bullets, guns. Done. When he stepped back into her room, she was slinging a shotgun over her shoulder, pack hanging off her back. He recognized the handgun on her hip as one of Coulter’s—nice piece with a sturdy grip and a knife duct-taped to the barrel. Packed a hell of a wallop after all the tinkering Coulter had done on it during his gun-modding phase, but he wasn’t sure if she knew that or if she had just liked the look of it when she’d picked it up. Seemed fitting, knowing what he did of her.

                She snatched the map up off the table, looked him up and down, and gave an approving nod. Hadn’t been focused before, but she sure as hell was focused now—locked, loaded, and ready to march. Now _this_ had been what he’d been looking for. She folded the map up and stuck it in the pocket of her duster. Sun was still high, cloudless blue sky, and no tell-tale sulfur smell signaling a rad storm. Perfect day to take back the parks.

                “We headed out, then?”

                She was already stepping onto the lift. Everything about her had been tensed—jaw clenched, chin up, eyes forward and feet planted. Her gaze met his again, though, and she met him with a small smile.

                “No time like the present,” she said.


	11. Wild Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cori and Gage take the Safari and try very hard not to get gored in the process.

                The Gator Claw nearly picked him up off the ground and sent him into the air. Hit him so hard she swore she saw his feet leave the pavement. He stumbled back and tripped down the stairs, head-over-feet until he fell to a halt at the bottom, head cracking hard against the ground. His arms flung out wide like he was trying to hug the sky. K.O.

                Which left her. Alone.

                The Gator Claw started to follow Gage down, but she blasted it in the back of its head with her shotgun. She might as well have been firing rock salts for all it mattered. She had its attention, but barely even managed to stagger the thing. Up close, it had to be ten feet tall and at least ten times her body weight. It would use Gage’s bones to pick her out of its teeth.

                Didn’t need a second thought. Her body was off and running before she had even decided to move.

                She sprinted around the side of the Welcome Center with her gun in her hand. She didn’t dare look back to see if she was being followed. The Welcome Center had a massive sloped roof that touched the ground, and that seemed as good a bet as any right now. The cement detail on the front façade of the building formed an almost perfect staircase starting at the ground and leading up to the flat roof. If she could give herself the high ground and get out of the way of the damn thing’s claws, she could keep it off Gage without it playing jump rope with her intestines. Hopefully. In all her time in the wastes, the name of the game with these fuckers had been avoidance. No hope of that now.

                She scrambled up, but she could hear the pounding footsteps behind her, and if she could make it up the roof, so could big-and-scaly. Talons on cement. She risked a look back and if all of the air hadn’t left her lungs, she would have screamed.

                Of course it was right behind her.

                It lunged forward, and she tripped over herself, almost slipping off the roof. She scrambled back to her feet but she wasn’t so lucky the second time. Her ruck was still on the ground where she’d dropped it when she first saw the last of the gator claws approaching. There was nothing to protect her back. The second she made it back onto her feet, she felt the sharp, white-hot sting as three talons tore into the flesh of her lower back, warm blood and chilled by the sudden breeze. She made it onto the roof, turned, loaded her gun with shaking hands, and fired again. The shotgun barely managed to stagger this thing; there was no way she’d survive if it got ahold of her.

_Shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit._

                The scent of her blood must have frenzied it like a shark; Gage was the easier target, but it only had eyes for her. At least she was leading it off for a bit. She reloaded with shaking fingers, but as she watched it, she realized that the blocks she had used as steps weren’t strong enough to support the gator claw’s weight. Chunks of the decorative steps crumbled under the creature’s claws and it slipped, sliding back down onto the ground. It made a second attempt, but couldn’t get purchase on the flat slope of the roof either. She watched as it stalked off, eyes still trained up at her as it backed away. She wasn’t optimistic about it leaving her alone—all it had to do was pull itself up onto the roof—but this gave her a second.

                Corinne backed herself up towards the front of the building and looked down in search of Gage. He had sat up, at least, but he was pale as a sheet and probably still trying to remember what year it was. His head had hit the ground _hard._ Not going to be much help. She wanted to scream for him, but she’d lost sight of the Gator Claw and if it was still nearby—and who was she kidding? it was _definitely_ still nearby—she’d just get his ass killed.

                A clatter to her left. She whipped around to see the Gator Claw, halfway up onto the roof on the opposite side. It had taken advantage of her distraction; she had no idea how it had managed to get up the roof but there was no time for speculation. She aimed her shotgun and fired at its shoulder, scrambling to reload. She didn’t have options. She could run to the other side and climb back down, but it would catch her or drop down on top of her, and then she’d be done. It was already almost back up after she’d shot it. She hit it again, this time in the face. That pissed it off, but at least it started to slip down. She could jump down to the ground from where she was standing, but it was at least a twenty-foot drop. The fall would probably break both her legs, and there was no way she’d be able to crawl away in time to escape the thing.

                No good. It was all the way up on the roof now, bleeding and panting, but still very much alive. She fired again and hit its shoulder, but it continued to stalk forward, crouched low, tail flicking back and forth. Predatory. Toying with her. She backed up towards the edge of the roof, but there was nowhere to go. Her hands were shaking. The gun only had a few shots left in it—no way she’d slow it down enough to get away.

                She fumbled her first shot, but still managed to hit one of its feet. It charged, limping less than she’d have liked. She pulled the trigger again, sinking bullets into its forehead. It roared. She screamed.

                The Gator Claw reached her and grabbed her around the middle, roaring in her face in a wave of putrid breath. When it shook her, it jostled the shotgun right out of her hands and the thing skittered down the roof and onto the ground, out of reach. The next roar shook her to her bones, its mouth wide to show off two rows of shark teeth, just made for eviscerating. There wasn’t going to be enough of her left for them to find. She struggled and kicked, planting her boot on the thing’s snout and ramming her heel into the space between its eyes. It jerked her back and held her over the edge of the roof. Her head snapped back and she saw stars.

_Bang._

                A bullet whizzed past her shoulder and sunk into the Gator Claw’s eye. Right through the brain with no skull to stop it. It staggered back and dropped her.

                She managed to catch the roof with her arms, her chin slamming into her forearms hard enough to make her teeth rattle. The Gator Claw staggered before the second shot connected. She didn’t see where it hit, but that one did it. The thing stumbled and rolled off the side of the roof, slipping until it hit the ground like some kind of grotesque slide. Her heart was pounding so hard she couldn’t hear anything else.

                Holy shit. She wanted to yell for Gage, but her voice came out as thin and raspy. That was alright, however, because it didn’t take him much to find her.

                “Boss?”

                “Hmm?” It was all she could manage.

                “Can you pull yourself up?”

                Her arms felt like jello. She was barely holding on as is. She shook her head with a whimper.

                “Alright, one second. I’ll make sure it’s dead and then come back for you.”

                She heard his boots on the pavement as he walked around the building, fired one more shot, and then walked back.

                “Boss, you sure you can’t get back up?”

                She tried. Honest to god she tried, but she hadn’t ever been able to do a pull-up, not once. She’d been a runner in gym class, not a weightlifter. She was so full of adrenaline she couldn’t even breathe, let alone get herself back on solid ground, so to speak.

                “I can’t.”

                “Okay, fine,” he shouted. “Then when I say go, jump.”

                “What?”

 _“Jump.”_ He sighed. “I’m not doing so great, Boss. If I try and pull you up, we’ll both go falling off the roof. But I can catch you.”

                This was a bad idea. A very bad idea. But she couldn’t move. Her whole body was shaking.

                “Three.”

                She sucked in a breath.

                “Two.”

                Braced herself.

                “One.”

                Air rushed past her face for a split second before she felt arms lock around her waist. He faltered, almost tipping them both over, but then set her down. Gage was breathing hard and bleeding steadily from a gaping wound running from his shoulder almost down to his hip.

                “You’re heavier than you look,” he grumbled.

                “Good catch.”

                He nodded, but his face was drained. Almost grey in color, and damp with a sheen of sweat. He’d lost a lot of blood and probably had a concussion at the very least, just looking at the way he swayed when he walked. They were both bleeding and limping, but the last gator claw was dead. The computer in the room below the Snake House had said there had only been one left, so as long as it was accurate, they were in the clear. Which was good, because she didn’t think she could survive another attack.

                She glanced over at him. Gage clutched his head, leaning heavily on the short wall around the patio. She could have left him to die and hit the bricks. He could have left her to get torn in half and hightailed it back to Nuka Town. And yet, here they both were.

                “You look like shit,” she said.

                “Back atcha.” He cracked a smile as he said it, the crazy bastard. “How many of those fuckers did Cito say he killed?”

                “Nineteen.” She should have let Cito come with them. She was afraid he'd turn on them, but now she was really regretting that hesitation.

                “And how many did we kill?”

                “Six.”

                “So that was all twenty five? Like the computer said?”

                She tried to remember. They had just left the Welcome Center maybe thirty minutes ago, but with the last fight, everything was fuzzy. She was pretty sure the computer tagging the gator claws had said there were only twenty five, though. Corinne nodded. Gage exhaled in a huff and muttered “good.”

                She dropped onto the steps in the middle, so he crossed to sit beside her, groaning all the way. He looked her over and must have been thinking the same thing she was. He needed help first. Her ruck was sitting a couple of feet away, so she leaned back as far as she could to grab the top loop on the pack and drag it over. The metal rings on the front scraped across the ground. He unlatched his armor and pulled the ridiculously heavy frame off over his head, letting it thunk to the ground beside them. He was so lucky he had that armor, though. There was a gash across his chest, starting at his shoulder. The claw marks broke up over the places where the armor had protected him and ended where the armor stopped, just above his hip. The marks were a deep, angry red, and she thought she was probably looking at muscle underneath.

                Better look at the head first. The chest wound was making her queasy.                                              

                The skin had split towards the back of his skull, but most of the damage wasn’t visible. She made a mental note to keep an eye on him in case he really had scrambled his brain. She cleaned up the back of his skull and then crawled around to take a look at the rest of him.

                She had to pick bits of his shredded tank top out of the gashes, but for the most part, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. He pulled his shirt up over his head so she could clean him up.

                “He got you good.” She soaked what was left of his tanktop in vodka from her pack. It was torn to pieces anyways—beyond saving. Might as well scrap it for rags. Besides, they could hit up the gift shop and get him a shirt with a snake on it or something.

                “Mmhm.” He was trying to keep his tone level, but his eyes watered at the corners when she touched the alcohol-soaked cloth to his skin. When she’d gotten the chest wound mostly cleared up, she sat back to look at him. Still didn’t look good at all, and he was still bleeding pretty steadily. He wasn’t going to like this.

                “You’re going to need a couple of stitches.”

                “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

                “Really wish I was.”

                She had never given anyone stitches before, but it seemed simple enough in theory? There was a needle and heavy thread in her pack for the occasion, but she had really hoped she wouldn’t have to use it. Sighing, he and leaned back and propped himself up on his elbows. She was half in his lap with the needle and thread, fingers shaking.

                “You gonna do it?”

                “Yeah.”

                “Some time this fuckin’ year?” He grit his teeth.

                “Yeah.” She took a breath to steady her hands. “So I just—”

                “Jab it in before I die of old age.”

                Well. At least she wouldn’t feel as bad about hurting him when he was being rude. She stuck him with the needle, sinking it in pretty far before pulling the thread through. Gage let his head fall back, sucking in a breath through his teeth. One down, a bunch more to go. The shoulder actually wasn’t too bad; he seemed like he was getting used to it until she moved to his hip. He jumped so hard he nearly knocked her down the stairs when she hit his hip bone.

                “ _Christ,_ Boss!”

                “What do you want from me?!” She bit her lip, finding the needle in his skin. “It has to be done.”

                “I know.”

                “I’m trying to be gentle.”

                “Fucking— _I know_.”

                She sat on his shins to keep him from moving again and finished the last couple of stitches. The skin was red and swollen, but in mostly one piece again.

                “There. Sit up.”

                She scrambled off his legs so he could right himself. The stitches bled a little, but not half as bad as before. She cleaned up the edges with the vodka-soaked rag and wound some gauze around the wounds to keep the grime out.

                “Done.”                                                                                                                                                               

                He nodded, teeth still clenched together, and motioned for her to spin around. Corinne was _not_ looking forward to this. Without a word, she pulled her shirt off over her head and let it hang around her arms. His hand was cool on her back, scoping out the damage. She hadn’t thought it was bad in the moment, but she was so hopped up on adrenaline and terror, so there was no telling what the damage really was.

                “Could be worse,” he muttered, fingers probing along her skin. She could feel the calluses on his hand when he pressed against her spine, getting a sense for how deep the gash went. Warm, wide palms. He reached for the rag she’d used and got started without another word. The alcohol was cold and stung so bad she almost jumped right off the steps. He started up just under her rib cage and worked all the way down to just over the edge of her jeans. The line of the cut burned bright and hot, much longer than she’d thought it was. Though, for someone who spent most of his time blasting people with a shotgun, Gage was surprisingly gentle—probably gentler than her inexperienced hands had been.

                “It isn’t that deep. Probably won’t need stitches.”

                “Okay.”                                                                                                        

                “We should bandage you up, though.” He grabbed the gauze from beside her and started wrapping, handing the roll forward so she could bring it around her front and hand it back to him, casing her up like a mummy from her ribs down to her hips. Now, when he set his hand on her bare skin, she shivered. Maybe it was just the fact that she was less distracted by the slash along her back, but goosebumps prickled at her skin. When he gave her the go-ahead, she pulled her shirt down over herself quick.

                It hadn’t been a comfortable decision, but it made the most sense to hunker down with Cito and his family of gorillas for the night. After seeing what he could do, she had no problem telling Cito he was welcome to stay. She’d station the Pack here anyways, and if anything, it was possible they’d really get a kick out of bunking next to the resident wild man. Gage wasn’t thrilled with the idea of staying the night, but at least they’d be safe enough where they could both get some sleep. They needed it. Gage sat in the corner and passed out almost immediately without a word. Corinne laid out the sleeping bag beside him and tucked in. It was possibly the weirdest place she had ever slept, surrounded by gorillas and watched over by actual honest-to-god Tarzan, but at least they were somewhere.


	12. Molotovs and Campfire Stories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She didn't listen for shit, but she sure as hell could make something out of nothing.

                Corinne didn’t like bugs and neither did he. Just wasn’t a good situation they were in here. He was on edge enough on his own, but she jumped every time she heard a sound, gun up. Shot the ground more than once, the bloom of dust making him think another worm was working its way out of the earth. Just about bit clean through his cheek when she jumped and backed into him. He caught her arm and steadied her, but she was already shrieking her head off at the worm that popped up, squirming its way over to her from the banged-up saloon. He blasted its fucking head off.

                After he’d had to knife one that had latched onto her leg, he decided that there were way too many of them coming up out of the ground for this to be anything other than a nest. He said as much, but Corinne, wrapping her leg up with strips of fabric she’d cut from a cowboy costume, didn’t think so.

                “I don’t think these things _nest_. They probably just came here for all the rotten food stored around the place.”

                “They’re all coming up out of the ground.” Gage raised his shotgun and blasted another one that burst out of the dirt about fifteen feet away. At least sitting inside the saloon, they had a little cover. “They gotta be coming from somewhere.”

                The look on her face when he said it told him that she just plain didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t much want to think about a nest of squirmy little monsters either, but that didn’t mean they could just pretend like it was a coincidence they’d had to shoot a million of them before lunch. She tied off her makeshift bandage with a grimace and stood up, looping back behind the bar. Stims, four or five bottles of various alcohols, some old glasses. She pocketed the stims, made room in her bag for the alcohol, and ditched the glasses.

                “We should burn the place to the ground, Boss. Whatever gang takes it will just have to rebuild.”

                “The buildings are sturdy.” She glowered up at him as she rustled around in her ruck. “We can’t nuke this park—we’ll lose the resources.”

                “We’ll lose our fucking legs if we keep going the way we’re going.”

                “If the gangs didn’t want to help clear this place, what makes you think they’ll want to rebuild it?” She looked out the front door quickly before pulling up her map. Her finger jabbed at the old minecart rollercoaster—the one building they hadn’t cleared. If there was a nest and they hadn’t stumbled across it yet, Gage was willing to bet caps they’d find it there. She nodded to herself and then looked back at him. “Besides, we’ve already done a lot of the leg work. All we have to do is clear one more building. What’s a couple more worms?”

                “I’m telling you, Boss—”

                “Noted, Gage.” She stared up at him, eyes hard. Would have been a lot more intimidating if she was about a foot taller, but as it was, the top of her head only came up a little past his shoulder and that wasn’t particularly threatening. Truth of it, though, was that she was the Boss. So his ass was just gonna have to walk into a fucking maggot nest, all because she wasn’t all that great at listening to good sense.

                He reloaded his shotgun, grit his teeth, and followed her into the coaster ride.

                It was just as bad as he’d suspected. Little fuckin’ worms all over the fuckin’ place, just exploding up out of the ground like goddamned rockets, but with teeth. He stomped on one hard when it sprang up next to his ankle, and the little shithead bit him and tore holes in his pant leg. Another one darted up at the Boss and she practically knocked herself ass-over-teakettle to scramble back away from it. She used her gun like a club, slamming it down on the worm’s head (at least, he thought that was a head), bludgeoning the thing to death. If he wasn’t already grinding his teeth down to dust, the whole scene would have been pretty damn funny. With a bleeding leg wound? Not funny. Not in the slightest.

                The bowls of the coaster ride were way too still. They’d been knee-deep in creepy-crawlies the whole way down, but at the heart of the place? Nothing. Just a massive crater in the ground. Shit wasn’t right; he knew it in the pit of his gut, and so many years watching his back had taught him to trust his gut. Corinne didn’t give a shit. Shrugged and said the whole place was creepy, before wandering the hell off. _Alright. Fine. Do it your way._ They fanned out. Gage checked out the fake town set up along the far wall and Corinne headed back past the crater to the control room. She hollered over that it was locked and he was halfway to stepping over when the ground rumbled underneath them.

                He knew it. He fucking knew it.

                Corinne dove into the line of broken-down roller coaster cars right as the biggest fucking worm Gage had ever seen in his entire life came bursting up out of the ground like some kind of horrifying pop-up toy. Must have been the size of three of him stacked end-to-end, and big enough around where if it rolled on top of him, it could crush him like a goddamned bug. It thrashed around for a second like it was looking for the source of all the noise. He couldn’t tell how the thing sensed anything at all—just looked like one bigass mouth to him.

                Gage ducked into the prop house behind him, gun at the ready. One shot wouldn’t take this thing down, but there wasn’t enough room to maneuver here. Place was too cramped, and now he could see smaller worms tunneling up from out of the hole, looking for blood. He was two seconds away from retreating back to the tunnel behind them when he spotted a flash of blonde across the room. On the last swipe, the queen worm had knocked into the roller coaster carts and forced Corinne out of hiding. She was exposed. The queen whipped around when Corinne cocked back the bolt on her shotgun.

                Shit.

                Gage dove out from behind cover and fired at the back of the thing’s head to draw its attention. Immediately, four or five of the smaller ones swarmed around his heels. He pulled the handgun off his belt to take care of the little ones, but he had the mother’s attention. It was a bad place to be. She reeled back, ready to swallow him whole when another shot echoed through the room. Corinne. Gage cleared the smaller worms and scrambled to reload. He caught the queen’s attention as Corinne pulled her ruck around front, scrambling for something.

                Crashing—overlapping sounds as the bottles of booze from her pack shattered against the worm or in the bottom of the pit. The worm whipped around, but its attention was caught between Corinne and Gage, and Gage did his best to ping it a couple more times to keep it off the Boss. If he knew anything about that stubborn set of her shoulders, it was that she had a plan. Gage stepped away from the house just a little more and caught Corinne in the corner of his vision

                 Lighter clenched in one fist. Two molotovs in her arms. Gage stomped on one of the smaller worms. The Queen reared back to crush him. The Boss lit both molotovs at once and took off running. The sound distracted the Queen for just one valuable half-second. Just enough time for Corinne to get out of the way. When she got close, she tossed the molotovs over her shoulder, one after the other without so much as looking back.

                She launched herself at him, slamming into his chest at a dead-sprint and knocking him into one of the old prop houses. His head spun, still trying to figure out which way was up. She crawled over him to get behind the wall. When he started to sit up and follow her, she grabbed the bars on his armor and jerked him on top of her. Good timing too—the molotovs went off and that must have lit up the alcohol, because the next thing he knew, there was fire in the pit with the massive fucking worm.

                Holy shit.

                They were nose-to-nose, breathing hard in the flickering light from the hellish barbeque happening twenty feet to the left. Adrenaline—blood pounding in his ears. The smell of fire and earth. She was soft under him. One of his hands was braced against her hip and when he shifted, she jumped out of her skin with a small “oh!”

                Christ she smelled good.

                He rolled off of her and laid with his back flat against the ground. She sat up and he heard a breathy laugh.

                “It worked.”

                “Yeah.”

                Took him a second to catch his breath. They sat there for a moment while the firelight flickered orange on the walls of the place. By the time they stood up and pat themselves down for injuries, the fire was dying down and the worm was mostly ash. Injuries weren’t too serious—mostly bruises for him, and she had gotten out with only a couple nasty bites on her legs. Nothing higher than her knees, since she’d learned to shoot ‘em before they got to close before getting to the bigger ones.

                When they stumbled out of the roller coaster ride, the grey clouds he’d spotted earlier had brought rain. They high-tailed it to the closest barn to get out of the cold. The second they closed the barn doors behind them, she collapsed onto a bale of hay, shivered violently, and took a look at her leg. Little punctures all up and down her calves—rings of bites, but nothing that cut too deep. He helped her clean them out as best they could and wrapped her back up again.

The rain poured down outside the barn as Gage set up a small fire in a metal pan he’d found in the corner and Corinne dug through her pack for dinner. Still shaking like a leaf, she grabbed a spoon from her lunchbox, pulled out the unopened box of Sugarbombs she’d bought off one of the merchants at Nukatown, and shoveled a bite into her mouth.

                “How was I supposed to know there was a nest?” She grumbled around a mouthful of cereal.

                “If you’d have listened to me once in your damn life, you’d have known.” He dropped his pack onto the floor and sank down after it, bone tired. “That’s how.”

                “Yeah. Well.”

                “Yeah, well nothing. I’m right, aren’t I?”

                She jabbed her spoon back into the box for another bite. Insisted on using a spoon, but still ate straight out the box. He didn’t see the use in all these damn niceties if she was just going to eat out of the box anyways, but she did a lot of things that didn’t make sense, like not listen to his advice. He shook out some cereal onto his palm and popped it into his mouth.

                “Well. Two down regardless,” she mumbled.

                “And three left, so don’t go getting lazy on me now.”

                She shot him a scowl. “Wasn’t planning on it.”

                Camping under the stars was nice and all, but having a roof was better. Especially now that it was raining. Not like the old barn was all that dry, but it beat sleeping in a goddamned puddle by a country mile. She sank down on the ground across from him and leaned back against a bale of hay, kicking her clunky boots off with her toes. Another thing on their growing to-do list—find her some good, durable boots that actually fit. She spent half her time tripping over herself and the other half pulling herself up off the ground. Her socks had holes in them too, but she’d gotten smart and started stealing spare pairs from him, so that was also on the list, on account of the fact that he wanted his damn socks back.

                They were both quiet for a bit. Being tired will do that to a person. But right as Gage was setting up to rest, she made a small noise in the back of her throat. When he looked up, she was staring. Eyes boring into him.

                “Where did you come from, Gage?” Thoughtful. Calmer now that they’d gone some time without having to shoot anything. And also: completely out of the goddamned blue.

                “Why are you asking, Boss?”

                “Curiosity.” She stretched her arms up over her head real casual, but refocused and fixed him with a hawk-eyed stare. Always paying attention. Always keeping both eyes open.

                “All around.”                                                            

                “That doesn’t tell me anything.”

                “Tells you everything you need to know.” He sat back, elbows on his knees. “Nothing much more to tell.”

                She bored into his soul with that stare. Waited a long minute, like she could crack him open and he’d just say whatever it was she wanted to hear. Unblinking.

                “If you don’t trust me, fine. It’ll be on your head.”

                “Is that a threat?”

                “No.” She grinned suddenly, shattering the tension like a baseball bat through a window. His shoulders worked their way down from his ears. “But don’t you think we should at least _try_ to trust each other? Given the circumstances?”

                He tipped his head back, looking up at the rafters above. No leaks in the roof over where they had set up. Fire was warm, reflecting gold in her eyes and lighting up all that blonde hair until she didn’t quite look like herself anymore. Intent. Patient, but unstoppable. Something about her just didn’t leave room for argument and the look on her face said that she knew it. Corinne knew well and good that she could get anyone to do anything she wanted, staring like that.

                “Alright. Fine.”

                She nodded, eyes bright. Triumphant.

                “Grew up in your average shithole settlement with parents that meant well, but they were pushovers. Watched them get smacked around by Raider gangs for years, handing over whatever they had to keep their lives.” Clothes, caps, food, water. Blood. He settled back, looking down at his mud-caked boots. He remembered the house, but the faces were all a blur now. Funny how that works. He remembered the patched-together couch, and the table his mother had shoved him under when raiders came to call, and the yard where his father had buried their dog after some jackass kid who couldn’t have been much older than sixteen had blasted its fucking head off. Couldn’t for the life of him remember what his old man looked like, though.

                “Anyways. One day, I’m watching them cower in front of some punk with a gun and it just hits me. “I ain’t gonna end up like this,” I says to myself. So I bail.” Late at night, when his mother was asleep and after his father had passed out in the old rocking chair, gun still sitting on his lap. “I’m what? Twelve years old? Didn’t matter. I’d seen enough of the world to know how shit works.”

                He told her about the mercenary work—running for caravans, errands for settlements, solving disputes. When he told her about the gangs, he left out what happened with Connor. Didn’t know why, just didn’t feel right to say it. Didn’t want her to see that slip-up and look at him funny. So he skipped ahead. Talked about Coulter, and settling Nukaworld, and how he shoulda never pushed Coulter into leading the gangs. Shoulda known better.

                When he was done talking, she nodded. “Hmm’d,” but was quiet other than that, like she was thinking. He scratched the back of his head. Their campfire crackled. The rain pinged off the metal roof.

                “How about you, Boss?” He didn’t look at her. “Where’d you come from?”

                She stared at him dead in the eye. Completely expressionless, blank like she was empty. Like she was made from stone. He didn’t know her well, but it was still a face he’d never seen her wear before. Touched a nerve.

                “All around,” she replied, tone flat.

                “That isn’t an answer.”

                “My story is about the same.”

                “Yeah?”

                “Yeah.”

                Didn’t leave him any room to call her on it. Couldn’t say another word to her about it. She wasn’t even trying to lie well, but he had the good sense to let it go. He wasn’t going to push. Not like it mattered anyways—it didn’t matter, so long as they got the job done and didn’t die in the process. He didn’t gave a rat’s ass if she was a townie from Diamond City, a settler from the ass-end of nowhere, or if she fell out of thin air. Didn’t matter much, so long as they settled things back at Nukaworld. But he had to admit he was a little curious now that she’d gone to all the trouble of digging up the past.

                “Boss, why bother giving me the speech about trust if you’re just gonna lie to me?”

                The smile she shot him this time was edged with a particular brand of bitterness—he recognized it but couldn’t tack a name to it.

                “Doesn’t matter now, does it?”

                “Nope. ‘Spose not.”

                Fine. Don’t share. Ain’t relevant anyways. She’d done it again, though. She’d talked him in damn circles. Someday he’d have to figure out how she managed that. She was softer, though, when she said his name.

                “Gage?”

                “Huh?”

                “You don’t have to call me “Boss” all the time. If you want, you can call me “Cori” while we’re on the road.”

                He nodded and rolled the nickname around on his tongue. Cori. Well, he supposed, Cori suited her just fine.


	13. Contact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She just wants to ruffle him. Just a little.

                Well, there was one thing that was good about her kid being a grown-ass man. She would never have liked taking him to a godforsaken hellhole like the one she and Gage were standing in now. Thought she would. Looked forward to it. But she would have spent an obscene amount of money on _this?_ Oh no. No, that wouldn’t do. Good thing the world had ended to spare her the disappointment.

                They’d just hit the kid’s park.

                Of course it was ghouls. Her favorite—just crawling around every corner and lurking under every pile of rubble. That sound? Ghouls. Weird smell? Ghouls. Something falling out the second-story window of an old candy shop? Ghouls, baby. Turn your back for two fucking second? All ghouls, all day. She’d thought the spinning horror that was the teacup ride had been bad. Then, a ghoul fell literally out of the sky and she shot everything in her line of sight, including Gage. Only nicked his calf, which was good, but he still shot her a dirty look every time he put weight on that leg and felt the scrape. Whoops.

                The King Ghoul though. He was something else. Glowing, like the more vicious of the ferals, but coherent and just so very sad. It’s not like she hadn’t heard her fair share of sob stories; the Wasteland never seemed to have a shortage of those. It’s not like she was some softie who let people off the hook because they cried a little. But the broken look on this man’s face? Someone who had lost everything in the war and had waited. Centuries. Just waiting for things to finally start going right.

                She told him to leave. She told him that there was no cure, and that he’d be better off taking his friends and finding Rachel—whoever she was—and heading somewhere far off, where the Raiders wouldn’t catch them. It worked for everyone anyways. She gets a cleared park and he gets his ferals without Raiders coming in and killing them periodically. That was how she defended it to herself, at least. Realistically, though, she just couldn’t. Even when Gage shot her a dirty look, she couldn’t bring herself to kill a dead man. Gage didn’t complain; they had what they wanted anyways. Didn’t matter _how_ she did it, so long as she got results.

                Oswald vanished in a puff of smoke, but she heard the door back down into the castle clank shut. Must have been using smoke bombs and a stealth boy. When she peered out at the park through a crack in the walls, she saw Oswald lead a small hoard of feral ghouls out through the gates. She had really thought she and Gage had gotten most of them. Glad she didn’t have to fight her way out, because that would have been a nasty surprise. Gage watched over her shoulder, and all he said was “well damn.”

                A win was a win. She hadn’t been winning by landslides since arriving, so at least this was more firmly a win than her fight against Coulter had been. She’d take “easier,” no matter what package it came in, at this point.

When she looked up, the sky was studded with brilliant stars. One nice thing about the end of the world; she could see the stars a whole lot clearer.                                        

                 

                Cori shook out the sleeping bag by the terminals under the makeshift tin roof. It was already dark anyways, and it just made sense to spend the night rather than try and make it back to base using the flashlight on her pip and what little luck they seemed to have pooled between them. Might as well hunker down. Besides, the roof of the castle was the only place she felt comfortable, especially after all the zombies they’d had to wade through to get here. If Nate coulda seen that, he’d have had a heart-attack. She almost laughed, but maybe that wasn’t so funny, all things considered.

                “You takin’ first watch?” He asked.

                “I can’t keep my eyes open.”

                “Me neither.”

                His hands were on his hips when she finally looked up. Hell. He didn’t expect her to rock-paper-scissors for it, did he? After a second, Gage shook his head.

                “Well, they can’t fly, right?”                                                                           

                “What?”

                He walked over to the door leading back down into the castle and planted a couple of trip mines around the doorway. If that door opened even a bit, it would hit the mines and set them off one after the other. They were well enough away and behind a row of metal filing cabinets. They’d be safe, and they’d have one hell of an alarm clock to wake them up. Good enough. He brushed his hands down his pants as she flopped down onto the sleeping bag, already halfway asleep.

                They’d only brought the one sleeping bag, but it was warm enough where they could unzip it, lay it out flat, and share. She pulled her duster up around her like a blanket. He didn’t seem worried as he set aside the bulk of his armor and stretched out beside her, long and lean.

                He was warm; she could feel the heat radiating off his skin. Very warm, and broader than she’d thought. Their arms were almost touching. Barely an inch between them. When was the last time she’d slept beside someone? If she rolled over in her sleep, she’d be on top of him, draped over his chest, hands flat on the bare skin of his shoulders (maybe). He’d have to catch her, strong hands securing her in place (maybe). His fingertips would brush her hipbones. Maybe.

                _Stop that, Hart._

                She wondered what made his blood boil. He’d mostly kept calm and collected through the first few parks, and the antics of the gang leaders never seemed to faze him. He could walk through fire and barely notice it, he was so stoic. Even when she was being a handful—and she’d been told on more than one occasion that she was a handful in every sense of the word—he was unflappable, arms crossed and leaning casually against a wall. Raised eyebrow. _Are you done yet? Good. We got shit to do._ Suddenly, desperately, she wanted to ruffle his feathers. Get something out of him. Anything.

                She stretched, arms up over her head, yawning widely. Not quite touching him, but dangerously close to the invisible line that marked his side of the sleeping bag.

                “Night, Gage.”

                “Night Cori.” Calm as a cucumber.

                She shouldn’t play this game. This was _not_ the time, and she had better things to do, like sleep. She stretched, chest arching up. Edging on his personal space, but not letting herself get close enough to invade that space. When that didn’t get a reaction, she yawned again. It was all childish—things she would have done as a college kid to get attention—but she was just curious. She knew about Gage, but she didn’t _know_ about him. Knew where he grew up and how he got here, but not what made him tick, and that was what she wanted to know most. In fairness, there was a valid reason for wanting to know, as well as a frivolous one. Maybe it was that she was in a precarious place, and it would really help to understand the motivations of her one ally. Or maybe it had been a while since anyone had touched her without trying to gut her.

                Beside her, Gage shifted to get comfortable and his arm brushed hers. Hot, sun-kissed skin after a warm day. Smelled like gunpowder and man and something else she couldn’t pinpoint. Something musky and heady, like oak or pine. Again, maybe it had just been a while, but he smelled damn good to her. Cori toed off her boots and pulled her duster up to her chin. He set his hands on his stomach and his eyes slid shut. In silhouette, his face was all hard planes and angles. Her mind wandered back to the fact that she could roll herself right on top of him so _so_ easily. Knees on either side of his hips, chest to chest, warmth radiating through her as he brushed a hand up her back and over her shoulder…

                He sighed, already half asleep. Hands to yourself, Corinne. Not the time nor the place to be playing with fire. Besides, she had one person in her camp right about now, and if she freaked him out and pushed him away, she’d be back on her own and sitting on the roof of a burning building full of raiders who would as soon rip her in half with their bare hands. Friends close, enemies closer, and no one close enough to kiss. Play it smart and stay alive.

                In the morning, she woke to find herself curled against his side, one arm wrapped around his chest, her face tucked into his ribcage. Also, one of her legs was wrapped around his, somehow? All tangled up and definitely closer than she had promised herself. So much for keeping her distance. Gage didn’t seem to mind much, though, so far as she could tell; he was staring up, expression blank.

                Well. She had wanted to get a sense for what ruffled him. Clearly, she wasn’t one of the answers.

                “You awake?” Sleep made his voice low and husky. She shivered.

                “Ah. Yes. Sorry.” She pulled her arm back and rolled onto her side of the sleeping bag, replacing that careful distance between them. “Morning.”

                He turned his head to rest his cheek on the makeshift pillow he’d crafted at some point, consisting of old coats and Cappy t-shirts. For a split second, his eyes flicked down and scanned her from her toes up. Blank expression, though she could swear she saw the hint of a grin. Dawn broke over the sharp arc of his jaw. “Morning.”


	14. Impatient

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their whole operation is one very dangerous, very unstable balancing act, but damn if she doesn't walk the line.

                The gangs all seemed to know she was back in town before she made it through the gates. They came in by the pond and Fizztop, but by the time they made it to the lift to her place, there were already eyes all around. Operators leaning against old snack shacks, Disciples sharpening knives by a campfire, Pack animals edging around the pond. She nodded as she walked by, keeping her steps as even as possible. Chip up, shoulders back. Atta girl. He skulked behind her, keeping an eye on the crowd. Not everyone, but groups of scouts from each gang who would report back the second she made it into Fizztop for sure. Real quiet. The only sound was the grinding of the lift as it pulled them up to her place.

                “Big crowd, huh?” Her tone was light, but she stared out the windows, watching as the Raiders scattered. He was right—like damn radroaches.

                “All lookin’ at you, Boss.”

                She paused and something flickered across her face so fast he didn’t quite catch it—and that was impressive all by itself, since he was damn good at spotting shit like that. Then, a grin breaking out over her face, she said “aww at little old me?”

                When he rolled his eyes, she shot him a theatrical wink. It was still morning; it hadn’t taken them all that long to make it from Kiddie Kingdom and now they had the whole day to replenish supplies and plan next steps. Problem was: they also had the whole day to field questions from raiders, and raiders weren’t famous for their patience. They’d want to know what she’d managed, who’d get what, and how soon they could jump. Gage wasn’t sure Cori had all those answers just yet.

                “What’s the plan, Boss?”

                “I dunno. I was thinking a shower, maybe a nap—” She was already unpacking her ruck, digging through the things she’d grabbed. Some clothes. Some knick-knacks. Fistfuls of bullets.

                “Corinne.”

                Her head snapped up at the sound of her name. She looked like he’d slapped her for a split second; had he ever used her name? She’d said he could. Didn’t think he had, though.

                “We’ll talk to the leaders first. Then I’ll address everyone from the Marketplace.”

                Better. Cori stopped rummaging through her pack and looked over at him and there it was—that spark. She was smarter than she let on. She could play the fool all she wanted; she wasn’t half as indifferent as she pretended to be. That was the kinda shit he needed to see.

                “Who are we putting where? They’re gonna want to know.”

                “For now, no one gets anything.” She folded her arms over her chest. “We aren’t divvying up parks until we know exactly what we’re working with in terms of resources, grounds, and people.”

                Waiting, huh? It was smart long-term. If one of the parks was a lost cause or if one had more resources than others, she’d want to factor that in. The second she shorts a gang is the second she loses control of the place—and there were not enough territories for the parks to be split evenly as it stood. But a waiting raider as about as patient as a pissed-off deathclaw. The news wasn’t going to go over well, and that was just that. It was all going to come down to how she sold it, or they’d have a riot on their hands.

                “They ain’t gonna like that,” he said.

                “When they decide to get up off their asses and help, they can have a say. In the meantime, we go with my plan.”

                “You sure this is smart?”

                She flashed a grin and that smile erased every line of tension from her face. That strategy and intelligence he’d seen a second ago went with it and now she looked like she had before, laughing about shit they saw on the road, grinning across a campfire.

                “No, but that hasn’t stopped me so far, has it?”

                Not sound logic but he couldn’t deny the results.

                Gage left her for a second to find a runner. Sure enough, hanging around Disciple territory was a newer-looking woman dressed like an Operator. Close enough. He passed the message along—leader meeting in twenty at the Marketplace. Tell Nisha, and then have her tell Mags, William, and Mason. The Operator looked him up and down for a second before deciding this was worth her time. For chrissakes, as if she had a choice. He watched from a distance as she ran up to a Disciple woman outside the Mountain, gave her a peck on the cheek, and then whispered in her ear before taking off. So _that’s_ why she’d been hanging around.  

                When he got back into Fizztop, Corinne had already dumped the contents of her pack, strapped on a handgun, and looked about ready to go. Her armor wasn’t ideal for close-quarters combat—she had a chestpiece, arm guards, and shin guards, leaving her head and throat exposed—but there was an air of confidence hanging around her that he hoped would be enough to make her look like a tougher target. They’d figure out if it was enough soon, he supposed. 

                The gang leaders took their sweet-ass time meandering in. Cori leaned against an old picnic bench, arms folded, for what must have been ten damn minutes before Mags and William turned up. Fashionably late, Mags said. Fashionably his ass. Mason was next, tromping in and plunking himself down with a hearty “let’s get this shit over with.” Nisha came shortly after but didn’t say a damn word. They sat down, grouped around the paper map of Nukaworld Cori had spread out over the table.

                “I’ve called you hear to talk territories.”

                “Do we have a development?” Mags leaned forward with her chin on her clenched fist.

                “My scouts seem to think our Overboss has already taken three of the parks back,” Mason added. “That right?”

                “Gage and I have secured the Safari, the Gulch, and the Kingdom for Nukaworld, yes.”

                “Alright!” Mason clapped Cori on the back so hard he almost bounced her off the table. Gage leaned back against the shop stall behind them. “So when do we move in, Boss?”

                Cori sat up straighter, shoulders back and chin high. She steepled her hands in front of her on the table. The effect was immediate. William, and Nisha leaned back in their seats, overly relaxed to compensate for the stiffness in each of their spines—already on-guard though Cori hadn’t so much as talked. Mags crossed her arms over her chest. Mason leaned in, teeth bared just a little like he was preparing to snarl. Gage set his hand on his gun. 

                “We are waiting to move until all of the parks have been settled. We will distribute assets once all assets have been attained.”

                “Sounds like you’re holding out on us, Boss.” Mason set a hand on Cori’s shoulder. “Sounds like you aren’t planning on delivering.”

                “The plan was to ensure that each gang has the same amount of resources. Nuka World is not dominated by any one gang—we split the territories evenly. We can’t do that until we know what we are working with.” Corinne’s tone wasn’t harsh or venomous, but she did absolutely sound like she was explaining all this to a five year-old. Mason didn’t leave her space. Gage flicked the safety off on his handgun.

                “The plan was to take back the parks,” Mags hissed.

                “The plan was to make us all rich,” William said.

                Mags set a hand on William’s arm and the two stared at Cori. Creepy as fuck, unblinking. Worse, Mason’s hand was still sitting on her shoulder. Knuckles white, digging into her skin. And even worse than that, Nisha hadn’t said a word. Shit was fixing to go south and fast.

                “You want to go in there and clear the last two parks yourselves?” Cori’s tone was even. She didn’t flinch, didn’t so much as acknowledge the tension. “Coulter may not have moved on the parks, but I’m not seeing an abundance of Pack corpses in there either. No Operator bodies. No Disciple bones. Just my blood and Gage’s.”

                She paused and looked at each person in turn. Mags. William. Mason. Nisha. It was so quiet Gage could hear his own hearbeat.

                “You want land? I’ll get it for you. Already more than halfway through; I make good on my promises. But unless you want to get out there and start working for it, we do this my way. We stay patient and we keep things balanced. Are we clear?”

                Mason let go of her. Mags leaned back. William unclenched his fists. Nisha’s shoulder’s sagged. Like Cori had just deactivated a bomb, the tension ebbed and everyone took a collective breath. Holy _fuck_ that had actually worked.

                She’d left the gang leaders speechless, and this was the first time Gage could say he’d ever seen any one of those pig-headed jackasses with their mouth shut. They hadn’t been expecting her. He’d promised them someone they could lead by the nose, and instead he’d given them Corinne. Wasn’t like she was some juggernaut of a person, but she wasn’t going to lie down and die either, that was for sure. Nisha was the first to break the silence.

                “Sounds like you have this in-hand, then.” Nisha stood up from the table. “The Disciples will patrol the park grounds without entering any of the parks to ensure we do not lose ground. We await your decision, _Overboss.”_

                Something about that didn’t sit right with him, but they’d been winning by the skin of their teeth from the start, so he wasn’t going to question it now. No telling with Nisha sometimes, so no use worrying about what she was planning for now. Nisha walked away from the meeting without a word said to anyone else.

                “Well. If our resident rabid dog can accept the terms, I suppose we will for now as well. The Operators will also patrol the general grounds.” Mags was picking at her fingernails like she was bored, but a fine shiver ran through her and Gage could spot the rage rolling off her in seconds. She wanted territory and she wanted it now, though she was probably more mad at Nisha for shifting the dynamic and giving power to Corinne and not her. Not like Mags and Nisha had ever been friends, but Mags had probably been leaning on the veteran leaders remaining a unit. Nisha had smashed that all to hell. Worked for him and Cori—they needed the gang leaders to be just friendly enough to cooperate with each other, and just hostile enough to keep the three gangs from overwhelming the Overboss. Mags and William stood, but waited a moment to see if Mason would follow. He didn’t. Confirmation, as far as anyone could see it, that each gang was on its own. The two Operators turned tail and stalked off.

                Mason laughed—a hearty whooping sound that started Gage.

                “Between you and me, Boss, I didn’t want to fight ya on this anyways.” Mason stretched out his shoulder. “I don’t care when we get this shit done, so long as it’s happening. Just good business to give ya a little incentive, right?”

                Mason winked— _winked at the fucking Overboss like some kinda dumbass—_ and pat her on the back. Grinned wide. How in the hell Mason continued to find this shit funny was fuckin’ beyond Gage.

                “Looks like it all shook out, then!”

                Corinne stared for a moment, then nodded. Guess she didn’t know what to make of that either. Mason nodded and then followed. When he left, Gage noticed that there was a clump of Pack raiders standing outside the marketplace, waiting. Mason raised his arms and laughed as the door to the market swung shut. Fuckin’-a.

                Cori slumped and sucked in a breath.

                “Could have gone worse, right?”

                “Right.”

                “They could have shot me.”

                “Coulda done more than that.”

                She gave a nervous sort of chuckle but didn’t comment on that last bit.

                After talking to the leaders, the rest was easy. Everyone already knew what she was gonna say before she even said it. She stood up on the scaffolding over the market and addressed the crowd. It wasn’t everyone, but the raiders who did show up pretty much filled the place. Response was lukewarm at best. They already knew and they already weren’t thrilled. But, if no one was going to risk their skin helping, there wasn’t a lot they could do. Sure, they could kill her, but then who would take the parks back? Raiders didn’t venture if they didn’t stand to gain big without losing anything. Funny folk like that—seemed all fearless and belligerent, chock full of piss and vinegar, but real practical about death and dying. She said earlier that she hadn’t seen the bodies around the parks, but that didn’t mean that there hadn’t been any. After the first couple people came back bloody or didn’t come back at all, expansion stopped seeming like such a good plan. If there was someone with the right combination of skill and nerve willing to do the work for them, they wouldn’t get in the way. All she had to do was deliver.

                No cheers when she was done talking, but no rioting either, so it all shook out.

                After the announcement, she did get that shower she’d wanted. He stood outside the door with his shotgun as she washed and changed into shorts she’d found at the Safari and a shirt she’d snagged off a mannequin at the Kingdom. Bright colors—orange shorts and a pink-and-blue shirt, damp with the water dripping off her hair. No armor. A couple of Raiders stared when she stepped out. This was a power move—leaving herself vulnerable after breaking unpopular news. He couldn’t tell if people would respect her for it, or hate her. They walked back to Fizztop in silence.

                She spent the afternoon looking at the map and making notes in the margins. She fixed up her guns over a dinner of warmed canned beans and Nuka Cherry. When it was dark, she grabbed an old magazine off the rack Coulter had not once in his life touched and read a bit by lantern light. They didn’t talk about it, but he spent the night in the chair across from her bed, just in case. She’d won the crowd in the moment (sorta), but with Raiders, there were no guarantees. Before bed, she stretched wide and asked him, standing by the couch where he’d set up for the night, why the other bosses seemed surprised by her. So she _had_ noticed.

                “They thought they’d have more control over you.” He set a lantern down on the coffee table beside the couch and kicked off his boots.

                “Did they now?”

                “The park was looking for an Overboss we could…ah. Steer. After Coulter—”

                “You needed someone you could manipulate.” She stared him right in the eye. “You thought you’d be able to control me.”

                “Well.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

                She was quiet for a moment. Just kinda looked at him, like she was processing. Then, she laughed—bright and loud, like she hadn’t heard something so funny in a long time. He was a little stunned. Not sure what to do with that. The laughter petered out into a quiet chuckle, and then what he was almost tempted to call a giggle, though that was not a word he’d think of associating with the Boss overmuch. Finally, she pat him on the shoulder and grinned, eyes crinkling and lips hitched up at one corner, revealing even white teeth.

                “Looks like you picked _wrong,_ then, huh Gage?”

 

                That was the first night he had a dream about her he shouldn’t’ve.

                He was fast asleep in the chair across from her bed and the dream was so vivid that he startled awake and half thought she’d be there on top of him. In the dream, she was quick as lightning. Corinne sat on his lap, jerked his head back with her fingers in his hair, and bit his lip. Fists curled up in his shirt, hair wild around her face, wearing nothing but that cocky smirk. He could practically hear the sounds she’d made—soft giggles followed by this bone-deep groan that rolled up from somewhere in the pit of her gut. He could just feel the softness of her stomach as his thumb brushed over her side. He jerked her forward with one hand on the back of her thigh, and she ground herself against him in a way that had him sweating. She molded against him and kissed him hard, the lines of her body crushed to his from his chest to his hips. Hot like the barrel of a shotgun that had just gone off. Head tipped back so he could see the line of her throat glide down into her chest and lower. Bathed in silver moonlight. He pressed his thumb into the soft divot over her hip bone, and she jerked, grinding against him. The way she moved was just—

                A shout from out the window jolted Gage awake. He sat up straighter and looked over at where she was sleeping, a lump under the covers in the dark. Where she belonged. The last thing he needed was for this to get complicated. Dream had been good and all, but it was better that the whole thing stayed a dream.

                Not her. Any other person in the world? Fine. But not the Boss. They didn’t need to make shit any more complicated than it already was. He slumped back down into his chair and focused hard on anything that wasn’t her. Didn’t sleep a wink that night.


	15. Praise Hub

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Cori meets some cultists and tries to ruffle some feathers.

                They were invited to stay with the local crazies, which was probably for the best. They hadn’t set out as early as they should have, and had burnt a lot of daylight struggling to get back on track after wandering way off course to avoid some gunners. Not in the mood for a shoot-out. She had enough to worry about with the gangs; she did not need to invite any more bullets than her announcement already had.

                They had planned to check on the tram station and the Gauntlet, and then track over what was left of the river to hit the Galactic Zone. Apparently, the Gunners thought it would be wise to bring a squad through Nuka World, following that same shallow river. Could she and Gage take out a squad of Gunners? Maybe. Would trying be more trouble than it was worth? Absolutely. Besides. Every gang had runners out around this area now. Runners who would probably find the unlucky sons of bitches soon enough anyways, and who were eager for a fight. Might as well let nature run its course. Corinne had started to head further north to loop around, but when she saw the giant fire hydrant and tin-hat wearing loonies, she just had to know. Besides, it would be smart to get in good with the locals, and it was getting too late to make it back to Fizztop safely. Always best to have a fallback, especially since she was essentially sitting with a lit match on top of a powder keg.

                Gage was antsy. They argued it out behind the giant fire-hydrant when one of the cultists (Tulip? Tallulah?) left them see if they could make extra space in the camp. She wanted to stay the night. No time, he said. Well, of course there was time, she snapped. None of the gangs wanted to do the work themselves, so until they took initiative, there was plenty of time. They’d just have to put up with her doing this at her own damn pace. He didn’t like her answer but couldn’t disagree.

                Hubologists. They called themselves Hubologists, though _what_ hub they were worshipping, she couldn’t ascertain. The Red Rocket they were using was full to bursting. The main rooms were for living (a jury-rigged kitchenette, some chair contraption that seemed important to their rituals, some chairs crammed around a dirty fold-out table) and the back room already had ten people sleeping on mattresses on the floor. There was a ladder leading up to the roof, but all they had up there was a tiny wooden shack—just big enough for a telescope and a desk. Just the one building and the public restrooms across the lot. For twenty people, that seemed absurd. Still offered hospitality, though. When Cori asked if they could stay the night, one man wearing the remains of a trashbag over a winter coat (in summer) said that if the Hub had brought visitors, then the Hubologists would gladly take those visitors in.

                Ultimately, though, it was either sleep half on top of some unwashed zealots, or set up a tent on the roof, next to the makeshift observatory. She and Gage borrowed a massive tarp and strung it up against the wall of the observatory so they at least had some cover if it rained, propping their campsite up on wooden pallets so their gear wouldn’t get soaked. They decided to set up early because the clouds were setting in.

                She found herself watching his hands. Calloused, dirt-streaked, and wide-palmed. Ungraceful. Working hands. She watched his fingers as he strung up the tarp. As he absentmindedly tapped his thigh while he was thinking. As he loaded bullets into his shotgun. Inelegant, sure, but nimble. And strong. He grabbed her arm to get her attention and the touch sent shivers up her spine.

                By nightfall, they had secured a place to sleep and chatted up some of the locals. Not a word of sense spoken by any of them. Everyone she talked to was cagey about Hubology, but sometimes they would talk about neuro-whatevers and zeta-somethings. Sounded like gibberish. Gage kept close behind her the whole time, but didn’t say a word, which was probably smart. He didn’t tend to have a lot of patience with bullshit.

                They traded a bit. The Hubologists were armed to the teeth, and she ended up having to make space in her pack for all the explosives she bought. They had a very suspicious amount of explosives on sale. She didn’t even want to know how much they had that _wasn’t_ on sale. As a passing thought, she’d wondered how this group had survived so close to Nuka World, but after purchasing a tenth plasma grenade, she stopped wondering. Before dinner, she very graciously accepted some treatment from an older guy in a coat that was more duct-tape than fabric, but all it did was raise all the hairs on the back of her neck and send her Geiger counter clicking. She scrambled up out of the “alignment” chair while Gage stifled a chuckle at her expense. That was when she had decided it would be best to call it a day.  

                They ate dinner with the Hubologists, all grouped around a fire outside with some highly questionable soup. Rain pounded down on the metal roof, hypnotic. Gage leaned against the door. His eyes followed her and heat blossomed up under her skin, stretching all the way out to her fingertips. The thought came back; she just wanted to ruffle him. Or maybe more. It wasn’t smart, but it wasn’t like Corinne Lucille Hart was known for making smart choices. And besides. She had already made up her mind.

                The wasteland was quiet, everything hushed under the rhythmic tapping of the rain. Almost peaceful. Cool, now that it was nighttime. Nukaworld was a hellscape, but she always had liked the outdoors, and up here on the roof it was just the two of them and the moon. Gage sat just inside their makeshift tent and lit his cigarette with the flame from their lantern. Ribbons of silver floated up and into the night, breaking into swirls on the tarp over their heads.

                 “I’m going to wash up,” she whispered.

                “Out here?” Eyebrows raised as he looked over his shoulder.

                Corinne nodded. “I doubt anyone will be coming outside this late.”  

                Gage shrugged, but she didn’t wait for him to look away before pulling her shirt off over her head. He made a noise in the back of his throat, but in the fuzzy golden light from the lantern, it was hard to read his expression. Gage leaned against the observatory wall, head tipped back. Small space. There weren’t a lot of places to look.  

                She stripped off her boots and let her pants fall to the floor in a soft _whoosh._ Bra. Underwear. Socks. Everything. His shoulders tensed. She slipped the handkerchief out of her hair and crawled over on her hands and knees to hold it out in the rain. The day had been warm, but the water was bracingly cold and raised gooseflesh on her skin. Every line of Gage’s body was taut. She watched as he rolled his head, trying to stretch his neck.

                She sat up on her knees and worked the handkerchief over her shoulder, wondering if he had looked over when she’d turned her back to him. She sure hoped he had—she had it on good authority that she looked fantastic from behind. Heat pooled in the pit of her gut, warm adrenaline as she shifted to scrub her legs, worked her way up her thighs, over her waist and chest. When she finished washing, she called over her shoulder for Gage to hand her pack over. He grunted and she heard the metal rings on her ruck jingle as he grabbed it.  She stretched before turning around and taking it off his hands. He let out a breath like she’d just reached back and punched him in the chest.

                “Here.”

                “Thanks.”

                Getting dressed would be a lot easier if she was able to stand but, with the tent overhead, she had to make do. She slipped on underwear first, and then a button-up. She left it mostly unbuttoned as an invitation. He hadn’t looked away. His eyes were intense in the warm glow from the lantern—dark and piercing. She couldn’t hear anything over the rain, which meant no one else would be able to either, if they were quiet. Corinne really wanted to say something sexy. _See something you like?_ But knowing he was watching made her hands shake. She hadn’t pulled a stunt like this since college. He was frozen, but his eyes followed her fingers as she combed through her hair. She let out a breath. Pressure spread out under her skin. A sparkle of excitement thrilled up through her. Gage stared, gob smacked.  And that felt damn good.

                It was such a small tent they were in. She was almost completely in his space when she crawled over to drop her pack next to him against the wall. His face was so close. Goosebumps prickled up on her arms. If he wanted to kiss her, all he’d have to do is duck his head just a little and lean forward. She had set her bag down already and had no real reason to linger like this now, but neither of them moved. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears.

                Corinne crawled back onto the sleeping bag, Gage watching her all the way.

                “I’m going to tuck in.” Her voice came out much more breathless than she had intended it. She was aiming for seductive, but landed much closer to rattled.     

                “You two alright up there?” Tallulah? Tulip? Whatever her name was, she hollered up from the yard in front of the station. Through a crack in the tarp, Cori could see her with her little gas lantern under an old umbrella. Gage snapped-to like he was waking up. He turned, opened the flap in the tent, and called down that they were all set, thanks. The cool wind from outside whipped through their little makeshift shelter for a moment before he let the tarp fall back into place and turned back inside the tent, sitting on his calves.  

                She got herself all stretched out on top of the sleeping bag, rolled onto her stomach, propped up on her forearms. He adjusted their things against the far wall way more times than was necessary. His eyes traced her up and down for a second. Her heart pounded in her throat. Just waiting for him to make the decision. To reach out and grab her. Maybe he’d lean down over her, pinning her to the ground as his free hand ran up her thigh, taking the shirt with it. Maybe he’d flip her over so he could look at her face. She raked her fingers through her hair.

                Heart beating— _ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum._

                He moved a little closer, reached for his gun, and then retreated back to his corner to look back out over the wasteland.

                In a low, husky voice, he said “Goodnight Boss.”


	16. Fixation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The more time they spent together, the more he couldn't stop noticing her.

                He couldn’t stop thinking about her, naked, lit up by the soft light from the lantern. Pretty as a fuckin’ painting, flushed pink from the cool rain with her hair brushing over her shoulder, all soft skin, round hips, and thick thighs. So close he could smell her skin as she reached for her pack. In nothing but a faded baby-blue pinstripe shirt, looking over at him from the bedroll. Fast asleep, lips parted and breathing softly. He’d woken her for watch a little later than he ought to have. He must have stared at her for hours as night settled in around them, drumming his fingers on the roof. Couldn’t have slept if he’d wanted to. She was sultry a wake, but half-asleep and curled up, she looked all different. Softer. She probably didn’t think nothin’ of it—if she’d been raised in a settlement, it would be completely normal to have no privacy like that—but he sure as hell had gotten an eyeful when she’d stripped down to wash before bed. He’d looked away fast to give her some privacy, but the sight of her was already seared into his brain, and he’d spent the next few hours tracing over every curve in his imagination. Probably wasn’t right. She probably hadn’t meant it like that.

                When she’d gotten up for watch, she didn’t even put on pants, just crawled out of bed in her shirt and sat where he’d been sitting. Damn hard to sleep with her curled up with his gun, half naked and with that sweet, bleary look on her face. He woke up bright and early the next the morning to her laying with her head on his stomach, gun still in hand. The sun washed over her legs through the cracks in their makeshift tent’s doors. Poured over her calves and then up, bathing her in gold. Shoulda been madder about her falling asleep on watch, but it was hard to be mad with her looking like that. He tripped over himself getting away from that tent when she started changing into her day-clothes. Went out for a smoke instead. Safer.

                Wasn’t the time for thinking about soft skin and saucy looks.

                The Spaceport was all full of old bots out to kill, and he couldn’t keep his damn mind on his gun and off her for two fuckin’ seconds. She wasn’t a lot of help, either. Sure she was good enough at killing things, but she always seemed to scrape by in fights, and spent most of her time grabbing him by the collar and dragging him behind cover as she ran from something she’d provoked. Always worked out in the end, but by the skin of their teeth. Usually, he was better at keeping her out of trouble. Usually.

                He spent most of his time pulling her ass out of the fire. The assaultron was brutal. One of those Novatron models with a fucking laser canon for an arm. It picked her up by the chestpiece on her armor and threw her clean across the damn park. Alright, it was only a few feet, but it was still bad. Cori cracked her skull against the wall of the Battlezone and slumped, and then it was all on Gage to take the bot out of the equation. They were both fucking lucky that the damn thing was already in bad shape and halfway to broken. Only took two shots to knock it out of the equation. One to the back of the head, and the second right through the processor on its chest.

                A stim and some water got Coir back up and moving again, and that was probably all they could really ask for. He’d chew her out for that one if he didn’t share part of the blame for not keeping his eye on the fucking prize.

                Took them a lot longer than anticipated to clear the park. Two days non-stop just running from one part of the park to another, trying hard to avoid getting shot in the ass by Protectrons with built-in soda dispensers. Whole thing was a little embarrassing. And the bots were mostly in disrepair, which was lucky because holy shit would they have been in trouble if someone had put effort into maintaining these things.

                When the coast finally seemed clear, she decided that they would hole up in the Starport office. Not smart—glass windows all around, huge doors, little cover inside. If they missed anything, they’d be in a world of hurt. But she didn’t like being cooped-up, so they set up the sleeping bag by the wall of terminals along the back, and he dragged over a chair for watch.

                Quick check for injuries. Some laser burns. Some bullet wounds. She landed wrong at one point and messed up her leg, so she was walking with a bit of a limp. He’d almost definitely broken his nose headbutting an eyebot, but the stim was already working to heal it and it wasn’t like his nose could get any _more_ crooked with how many times he’d broken it. So nothing beyond repair. Mostly, they were just tired as all get-out.

                They weren’t in great shape, but they weren’t in bad enough shape to warrant heading home to regroup. Besides, they’d lost some time hanging around with those weird cultists and if they head back with work still to do, she’d lose credibility. People were getting impatient and her smooth-talking wouldn’t hold them for long.

                Still, when she found a flyer for yet another fucking distraction, she was real eager to punch that address into her map.

                She’d found the leaflet tacked to a corkboard in some old employee office. _The Grandchester Mystery Mansion._ Something ridiculous about a murderer or something like that—an old gag to lure in tourists, though why anyone in their right mind would want to explore something supposedly haunted was beyond him. Why invite danger? Then, those soft old-world folks probably didn’t have enough fear in their sheltered lives. Didn’t have to dodge bullets and ferals all day. Fuckers probably needed something to get the adrenaline going. She smoothed the flyer out on the floor and drummed her fingers on her thigh.

                “If we—”

                “No, Boss.”

                “We could—”

                “Don’t.”

                “We _should_ —“

                “Cori.”

                She looked up at him, eyes narrowed. “You didn’t even hear me out.”

                Gage leaned back in his seat, still nursing his injuries. No, he had not heard her out, but he really didn’t need to because even though he hadn’t known the Boss long, he knew her well enough to know exactly what she was thinking. And what she was thinking? Not gonna work.

                “We can see if it is a tenable territory. It’s further from Nuka World proper, but it might be a good solution for our territory problem.”

                “We came out here to do a job.” Gage folded his arms over his chest. “People will be happiest if we just do what we said we’d do.”

                “We have five territories and three gangs. We’re going to piss someone off.”

                “We’ll figure it out.”

                “And this is how!” Cori got up onto her knees, pointing down at the flyer. “We make more territories.”

                He had a bad feeling in the pit of his gut about this. No one had found this place because no one had gone out as far as Grandchester. They could roll-up to a ruin. Or worse, a nest of Gunners. Who even knew what was out there?

                Like she could read his thoughts, she added “it’s just recon. Nothing to lose.”

                He thought for another second. They did need more space to pacify the gangs. But this may not be worth the time it would take to explore, and the risks? Gage didn’t like placing bets on shaky odds. The look on her face, though, was determined, and even if he had some valid arguments against this, it looked like she was already set on heading out come morning.

                “We need to start thinking long-term, Gage.” Same tone she used on the bosses. Cool, collected, resolute. “We only have the Bottling Plant, and then we can start divvying up territories and turning the power back on. We need to have a plan.”

                “This isn’t a good one.”

                “Do you have any other ideas?”

                No. No, he didn’t. The Red Rocket the Hubologists had nestled into wasn’t worth their time. The place was small and didn’t have any kind of resources he could spot. There were other stations around Nuka World, but none of them had much to offer, if his intel was any good. Grandchester was a risk and he hated to admit it, but she had a point.

                Fine. He nodded and she grinned wide, like she’d ever doubted winning this argument. She almost certainly hadn’t, though.

                The sun set and she wrapped herself in the sleeping bag, sitting with her back up against a desk, legs crossed and hunched over the lantern, trying to read an old book she’d found in the office of the Spaceport. Strands of blonde hair fell into her face no matter how many times her fingers brushed them behind her ear. He’d never seen her so focused. Armor sitting beside her, dressed in nothing but a tank-top and her jeans as she curled around her prize. She’d stopped for a whole minute in the office of the coaster ride, flipping through pages when she first found it. She was intent, trying her damndest to figure out how to read past the water stains and faded ink. He couldn’t see the cover or make heads or tails of the words, but every now and again, she would turn the page with a soft sigh or laugh, so she at least must be following along.

                “Whatcha readin’?”

                “Book.”

                “I figured.” He leaned forward in the chair to get a better look. Nothing. Still couldn’t parse it. “What kinda book?”

                “Romance.”

                “Cute.”

                She looked up at him like she was prepared to be annoyed. After a second, she laughed, shook her head, and looked back down. Without looking up from her book, she picked a berry off her mutfruit and popped it into her mouth. Faint purple stained the corner of her lip and the tips of her fingers, blooming like a flower. Bright. Her tongue flicked out over her bottom lip. He had a sudden memory of her half asleep, cheek pillowed on her arm, lips parted just a bit. Blood pounded under his skin. She swiped a bit of the juice with her thumb. He shifted in his chair.

                “Hand me a bite?”

                “Hmm?” She looked up, eyes bright amber in the light from the lantern.

                He pointed to the fruit when she looked up, and she plucked off another berry and held it out. Before he had the chance to think it through, he grabbed her wrist, leaned close, and took the fruit from her fingers with his lips. That got her attention. She all but dropped the book, looking up at him like she’d been zapped. They were glued there for a minute, his hand on her wrist, her eyes wide. He let go. Couldn’t tell if he was sweating because of the summer heat or because of her, looking at him like that.

                Wasn’t a good idea. This was the Boss, and it was his experience that told him not to let shit get personal like this with the boss. He fucking knew better, was all. But it was damn hard following his own advice sometimes, and it was even harder when they were alone. Out in the middle of nowhere.

                Worse was, though, who knew what she was thinking? She seemed to take a shine to him sometimes, but he’d seen it himself: Corinne could be real charming if she wanted something. Maybe she was toying with him—seeing how she could best keep him doing what she wanted. Gage leaned back in his seat and set his rifle on his lap where it belonged.

                For a second, she sat there with her hand out, staring. Then, slowly, she sucked on the tip of her thumb. She wiped her hands on her jeans and set the book back to rights. Coulda been the lantern, but he thought her cheeks were awful red. Good. After how bad he’d been burning, served her right to simmer a little. It was a while before she turned another page, and he couldn’t tell if she was just having trouble reading the smudged text, or if she was thinking. Wanted to ask. Set shit straight. But he bit his tongue and looked out the window at the night instead, which was probably for the best.

                It wasn’t much longer before she turned out the light to go to bed. She pursed her lips, extinguishing the lantern with a little puff of air. Even as his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could make out the shape of her, crawling under the covers. Slept on her side, and that was a pretty sillouette—curves of her hips rising under the blankets, her arm draped over her middle.

                “Night Gage.”

                “Night Boss.” 


	17. Bad Luck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corinne has always been bad at following good sense and sticking with the plan.
> 
>  
> 
> *A note: here there be smut! These two are a pretty physical pair and there will be (most likely) a number of smutty chapters ahead. If this makes anyone uncomfortable or if you would like those chapters marked, please let me know. I am happy to label them if that makes people feel more comfortable! :)

                Gage had been just about done with this place the third time or so they saw a creepy little girl running through the halls. She flitted in and out of the corner of Cori’s eye every so often, but never quite when Cori expected it. Sure, it made sense that they would see her running through the kitchen after the audio tour droned on about how she used to torment the staff. But then, they saw her standing in an access stairwell that must have been used by actors. She had to be some sort of hologram—it was a haunted house ride at outside an amusement park, after all. But it wasn’t clear what she’d been programmed to do.

                Gage wasn’t having any of it, regardless. The girl sidled into view and Gage spat out “fucking bitch” through his teeth. In a way, it was a little endearing. Big scary raider, master manipulator, no-nonsense tough-guy, and he got spooked by a haunted house gimmick. She climbed the stairs to the second floor and found that they were overlooking the foyer. So _that’s_ where the stairs were. Go figure.

                Then, as Cori stepped into the next room, the door slammed shut, separating them. The tour audio played—going on about séances held in the room. The little girl skipped on to the next room across the way, but no way in hell she was following without Gage at her back. Somewhere across the room, she heard a faint ticking. She jiggled the handle, but no dice. _Calm down. It’s a haunted house theme park attraction. How bad could this be?_

                She pressed her back to the door and took in the room. A table with a candle up on a small stage. Some bookshelves. Some display cases. Gage kicked the door from the other side and nearly rattled the teeth out of her skull. A pinprick of panic stabbed at her just below the ribs and she shifted, her back to the wall, gun out. Locked and loaded. The audio finished. What was the gimmick here? Gage threw his full weight at the door from the other side, but it barely budged. Was the ticking getting louder?

                There was a candle lit on the table in the center of the room. A _lit_ candle. In an abandoned house. Cori took one hesitant step forward before she realized that there was a faint shimmer in the air. And the smell of gas. She managed to drop to the floor right before the gas caught, singeing all the hair off her arm. The fire vanished as quick as it came, and the door unlocked.

                “Cori!” 

                She was glad it was just him along for the trip and not a team of raiders, because he came through that door to find her huddled up on the floor in the corner, arms over her head. Corinne scolded herself for not figuring out the trick sooner, but she was still shaking too bad to stand up properly. Gage jerked her to her feet and she sure as shit could feel the burn, now that his fingers pressed into it. Cori started to pull back, but Gage held fast, tugging on her arm so he could get a better look at the damage. He was intent. His lips were set in a hard line. There was a slight sheen of sweat on his forehead. After a quiet moment, he let go and reached into his pack for a stim, shoving it into her hands.

                “This fuckin’ place.”

                “Yeah.” She jabbed the stim into her arm. “You’re not wrong.”

                Gage looked over at the door, and then back at the stairs behind them. None of the staircases actually led to this landing; they twisted and turned and some led to nowhere at all. Still, if they wanted to, Gage could drop down onto the first floor and then catch her as she followed, and they could leave right through the front door, march past the broken protectron taking tickets, and be on their merry way. Cut their losses. He looked back at her.

                “No,” she said, arms crossed. “Defenses like this? There has to be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

                “That didn’t make a lick of sense.”

                Sometimes, she forgot that not all pre-war expressions had been preserved.

                “There’s definitely good salvage here,” she said. “And it sure as hell is fortified enough to serve as a base.”

                He didn’t respond, but his silence wasn’t the same easy quiet he slipped into on long walks. He stuck so close behind her that he nearly bowled her over when she stopped short in the child’s bedroom.  Cluster grenades. There were four or five cluster grenades hanging down from the ceiling on lines of fishing wire. Gage put a hand on her hip to steady himself.

                “What kind of bullshit—?”

                She stretched out her hands slowly and carefully to start disabling the cluster a foot or so away from the tip of her nose. It took them longer to disable all the grenades than it had to clear the kitchen of bumbling protectrons, but they managed it without blowing themselves up and were able to pocket fifteen frags by the end of it. She thought they were in the clear until the soundtrack kicked in again. They must have tripped a sensor, because another audio clip played, and then the door on the other side of the room sprang open. She hadn’t taken three steps forward when she heard him.

                “What? How in the hell?!”

                There was a scavver camped out upstairs, and he came flying through the doorway with a gun in his hand. Paydirt. They must have reached the end of the house.

                Ultimately, aside from scaring the piss out of Cori and Gage, the scavver didn’t do a lot of damage. Cori dropped to the floor as the first shot rang out, and Gage shot the bastard without blinking. He was dead in half a second.

                The bedroom seemed to be the control center. There were provisions, a hoard of bullets, some clothes. Fuckload of caps, which was always a bonus. She dumped all of the bullets into Gage’s pack and stole a can of chips off the rations. In the corner was a massive computer and a desktop terminal. According to his journals, the scavver’s name was Zachariah. Ex Gunner. Weaponized the house and then took in all the spoils when other scavvers came through looking for loot. They had gotten lucky—apparently, he had been trying to get an assaultron up and running, and that would have been a hell of a fight in close quarters like these. Most of the house seemed fairly easy to rig based on his notes. Why he’d kept a shitty hologram of a little ghost girl was beyond Cori, though. She gave up on reading after a couple of entries and turned back to Gage.

                He was half out the window on the other side of the room, which let out onto a fire-escape. She was about to follow him, but that was when she saw a closet door. And she only noticed it because, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the little girl hologram run through it. She stood up and the door creaked open like it had been pushed from the other side. At first, she had thought that it must be a closet. Then she saw stairs.

                “We got what we wanted, Boss. Cleared the place. Let’s go.”

                “Just a second.”

                Corinne stepped up the short flight of stairs, turned the corner, and opened the door at the end of the hall that led to the attic. Gage was so close behind her that she could feel every breath on the back of her neck. There was a light on just ahead of her, around another corner. Everything in this fucking house was a weird hallway. But this didn’t look like part of the attraction. There was old scrap, some maintenance panels, dusty mannequins. She rounded the corner into the very last room and there was the hologram leaning against the far wall, looking unnervingly solid. Staring right at her.

                “Corinne,” it giggled.

                Corinne felt a jolt at the sound of her own name like a clap of lightening slamming through her veins. Her mouth was dry. They hairs on the back of her neck prickled.

                And then, without another word, the ghost ran right across the room and out of sight behind some shelves. She didn’t know what it was that compelled her to move, but she sprinted over. On the wall the little girl had seemingly run right into was a door. Her hands were shaking. She wrenched the door open with a vengeance. On the other side was a blank wall. Solid as hell.

                Gage had come up behind her, gun still in his hands. He stopped dead and for a moment, they both stared at the wall behind the door. Neither of them said a word, but this room was absolutely not part of the attraction. She wasn’t sure how long they stood there, but eventually Gage grabbed her by the arm and jerked her back. He didn’t let go when they made it back down into the control room, but shoved her towards the window in the bedroom. They sprinted down the rickety metal stairs of the fire escape until they hit the ground and made it a good distance away from whatever the fuck it was in that house that knew her name.

                The second they were clear of the Grandchester Mansion, he grabbed her shoulders and shook.

                “The hell do you think you’re doing, dragging me through a place like that?”

                “What the hell do you think you’re doing manhandling me like that?” She shoved back against his chest just hard enough to get his attention. She could tell by the set of his jaw, though, that she was in for it now. She remembered his face when he’d bust through the door in the séance room and found her on the floor. The blind panic in the attic as he’d grabbed her and made for the fire exit.

                He dropped her and turned around, hands on his hips, shifting his weight from foot to foot. A cloud of dust bloomed over the toe of his boots before he finally turned back.

                “Don’t you flip this on me.” His index finger jabbed into her chest. “I told ya this was a bad idea. You didn’t listen.”

                “Who’s the Overboss here?”

                “Yeah, and who got you there?”

                She felt her temperature shoot up like she was out baking in the sun. Fear and adrenaline were a hell of a cocktail and she knew he was right—she should have listened—but the chemical Molotov sitting in the pit of her gut was ready to burn him alive. There was a response bubbling up in the back of her throat, but she swallowed it back down, turned on her heel, and marched off. As it stood, it was already getting dark; night was settling in on the horizon. She wasn’t even one-hundred-percent sure she was walking in the right direction, but one foot in front of the other and she was off.

                “The fuck you goin’, Boss?”

                “Home.”

                “Is that where you think you’re headed?”

                She threw her arms up and kept on marching. His footsteps came up behind her. He practically had to run to catch up, which gave her a little spark of petty joy. It was almost dark. Alright. Too far out for home.

                She headed towards one of the old empty camping cabins dotting the landscape and practically threw her pack off the second she got through the door. The metal rings on her ruck jingled as they hit the wall. Gage was still hot on her trail and dropped his bag beside hers with the single most indignant _fwumph_ she had ever heard in her life. She didn’t so much as look over at first, but then she realized that her sleeping bag was still strapped to her ruck. Damnit. When she wheeled around to retrieve it, she was staring up at a wall of pissed off raider. Cori pushed past, her shoulder jamming against his tensed arm. He was _solid_ , but she was proud of the fact that she didn’t stumble.

                The straps holding her sleeping bag down wouldn’t unfasten, and the pack wouldn’t cooperate, and she knocked herself over backwards jerking the thing off her bag. She stood up with as much dignity as she could muster and set up in the corner of the living room. Laid out the sleeping bag, set her ruck down next to it, smoothed covers out a few times. Finally, she heard a huff behind her.

                “Boss.”

                She stood back up, squared shoulders, chin high.

                He stared down at her for a long moment. He was mad; she’d never seen him this angry. His nostrils flared and his lips were set in a line, and she was mentally prepping an army of counter-arguments. He grabbed for her arm, just above where the burn ended, and wrenched it to the side, not hard enough to hurt, but none too gentle either. Without a word, he pulled her first aid kit out of her bag, dug through it for some ointment, and wrapped her up good and proper. She was two parts furious and one part on the verge of laughing—the stupid, pig-headed jackass. When he released her, she squared her shoulders and looked up at him. He stared back down. She stepped into his space.

                Then, without a word, he grabbed her arms again, only this time he jerked her closer and his lips crashed down on hers, hot and hard and insistent. His breath scorched through her. He bit her lip. From simmer to boil in under two seconds. Flashpoint.

                _Fuck._

                She was mad. She was still mad. How dare he talk to her like that? But that kiss. Her body responded without her. She kissed back twice as hard, the metal bars across his chest cold in her fists. Five-o-clock shadow? More like eight-o-clock, full-dark. The stubble was just the icing on the cake—a little pain, a little pleasure, and she couldn’t stop thinking about what that stubble would feel like rasping up her inner thigh. One of his hands left her arm and pressed against her back, arching her against his hips. A shiver stumbled down her spine.

                “I’m still mad at you,” she mumbled through a moan.  

                He pulled back for a second and looked at her. Fingers of his free hand twisted up in her hair, tugging her head back. Growled in her ear “I’m fuckin’ mad at you.”

                His thumb stroked up her throat from the hollow of her collar bone to the underside of her chin. There should have been a danger feeling. She was all about gut feelings, and this man’s hand around her neck when they were two seconds away from a screaming match should have given her that danger feeling. There was nothing but raw adrenaline like static rising under her skin.   

                Her fingers hooked in his belt loops. His nose brushed against her neck. He bent his head to kiss her collar bone and his tongue burned a line that stopped just below her earlobe, hot breath curling over her skin. She was already halfway through unbuckling his belt. Fingers skimmed his hips. Then a little lower. Not that she’d spent a lot of time imagining what he’d be like, but she _had_ maybe once or twice wondered and her imagination hadn’t been all that far off. Well then. She squeezed and, hand on her throat or no, he wasn’t the one in charge here. Damn right, and he’d better not forget it. She shoved hard against him and he moved after a second. There was a delay—she wasn’t strong enough to knock him back—but he listened and followed direction. A game of careful distances. He waited for her barely an inch away. She tapped his armor and he stripped off his chest piece; it clanked to the floor next to her sleeping bag.

                He looked smaller and leaner without the clunky metal frame, but then he closed the gap between them and sure, the frame added some bulk, but he was still a brick wall against her chest. Her palms glided up, starting low and tracing over the hard muscle of his stomach until she could tug his shirt off over his head. He was all beat to hell. Overlapping scars, a divot that looked like a bullet hole, a burn or two or three. She’d ask about it later, when she was done fucking him and then yelling at him (maybe in that order, though she could never be sure with Gage). He backed her against the wall, one of his legs slipping between hers. Solid, pressing against the length of her so that she was pinned. He shifted and she nearly jumped out of her skin but it was so good she squirmed against him again just for the thrill. Hands on her hips, he boosted her up so that they were eye-to-eye. She wrapped her legs tight around his waist.

                “You,” he said, adjusting his grip on her. “I’m still—” She squeezed her thighs and he moaned onto her tongue. _“Fuck.”_

                “When we’re done here, I’m going to kick your ass, Porter Gage.”

                She could swear she heard him laugh. He dipped back down to her neck before one hand came up under her shirt. Warm, calloused palms and long fingers. Her body had an embarrassingly immediate response. Heat flushed up under her skin, blooming out from her core and burning over her, following the path his fingers grazed. Every time he nipped at her throat, her whole body responded. His thumb brushed her nipple over her bra and her chest arced up to meet him.

                He shifted and she practically climbed him like a ladder. His head lolled back and she seized the opportunity to bite him hard. Salty skin—sweat and a tinge of smoke from the fire at the Mystery Manse. His Adam’s apple bobbed against her cheek. The hand under her shirt squeezed, fingers pinching just hard enough to make her gasp. A little bit of payback. She bit again. He slid his hand up, taking her t-shirt up with it. She raised her arms to let him slide the fabric over her head and the cool night air combined with the rough calluses on his fingers raised a trail of goosebumps that ran all the way to her wrists. Her legs wobbled when he set her back down on the floor. Then one hand closed over her throat again—not tight but warm, holding her still—and his teeth skimmed her shoulder. He unbuttoned her pants with his free hand. She raked her nails down his chest. His fingertips stretched down against her skin.

                It was dark. The only light came from the moon, spilling in from all the little square windows that were blown out on the front of the building. In the dark, everything was disconnected sensation—the searing heat of his skin and his mouth and his hands spilling over her body. She twisted but he held fast, touching her slowly like he was memorizing her. She ground herself against his palm and the sound he made in response was just—

                “Tell me what you want, Boss.” Breathless. Baritone.

                She wriggled, defiant till the end, desperate for just a little more sensation.

                “Tell me that you want this.”

                She was supposed to be mad at him, not begging him to fuck her. Supposed to. But Gage always seemed to know just how to handle her (in all senses of the expression). He gave her one good hard stroke with two fingers, and then he started to travel back up to her stomach. Her hand latched around his wrist. Silent plea. She squirmed against him, but he didn’t relent. So close. She rocked up against him again and his hand was so close but just not close enough. His breathing was ragged.

                “Corinne, tell me you want this.” His voice cracked on her name, desperate and husky and gasping. That did it.

                “Gage, please.”

                That was the magic word. After all, she’d been brought-up to say “please” and “thank you.” Just, maybe not quite like this. He knew just how to touch her. Her whole body was buzzing—a bed of embers, with a taut warmth coiling and uncoiling out from the pit of her stomach to the tips of her fingers. He stopped and pulled back, looking at her. For a second, she could feel every heartbeat and every drop of blood in her veins. She stumbled into him and threw her arms around his neck. Kissed him in a way that should have been deeply embarrassing. Needy. Gage didn’t seem to worry about it; he folded around her like a second skin.

                She shoved him hard until he got the picture and sat back on the sleeping bag behind them. He watched her as she peeled off her jeans, eyes glued to her hands as they glided down her legs before she got down onto her knees to straddle his hips. His hands skimmed up the backs of her thighs. And, if she had thought it was good before, every tiny touch in the inky blackness around them glowed through her. He must have been paying attention because he didn’t waste a second. It was hard to focus on stripping off his jeans, but she did it. Gage kicked his boots off to help her, but she wiggled him out of his pants almost as fast as he’d coaxed her out of hers. Naked, she settled down onto his lap, his hands holding her in place.

                This wasn’t new. Just sex—nothing more. Not like she’d never done this before. But she arched her back and rolled her hips like every touch was an epiphany. Life-affirming. He let her set the pace. She raked her nails down his chest good and hard, dipping into old ravines of scar tissue. She writhed against him, and he responded in kind, step-for-step. Cori’s nerves were on fire—tiny frayed wires all giving off sparks at once, burning her up. His hands were making a circuit, sliding up her hips, roving back down the backs of her thighs, jerking her forward. He reached between them to touch her and she thought she’d come apart at the seams. His free hand gripped her thigh hard enough to bruise, holding her still. It was exciting. It was new. It was all grasping hands and gasps and she didn’t care if it would complicate things later, she was too wrapped up in how fucking good it felt right _now._ Her head tipped back as she rocked against him in just the right way, sending ripples of bright hot light up through her. He snapped his hips. Light, color, sound, sensation. Electric. Shocking. Heat boiled through her when she finished and fell forward against his chest.

                She could feel his heart pounding against her cheek. Gage pulled her down against him good and hard in a way that made her jump. His shocked grunt jerked her right back to Earth. Even coming back down, he felt so fucking good. And now she had the upper hand, because he still hadn’t finished yet.

                She dug her fingernails into his shoulder, rolled her hips, and grabbed a fistful of his Mohawk. He was close; she could feel it. She tugged his hair, jerking his head back, and whispered in his ear “still mad at me?”

                That seemed to do it. He toppled over the edge right after she had. Mouth open, gasping like a man drowning. Muscles tensed in every inch of his body. Putty in her hands.                                                            

                His chest spasmed under her like breathing hurt. She should have had enough decency to at least roll off of him, but they laid there intertwined with her splayed out across his chest for a very long time. Boneless. She felt like melted light. His hands seemed to be glued to her butt, holding her in place. She folded her own hands under her chin on his chest, his heart hammering against her palms.

                He leaned in for a second like he was going to kiss her, but thought better of it and brushed a strand of hair back from her forehead instead, letting his fingers skim her face before retreating back into the safe anonymity of night.

                “Yeah,” he said finally, his voice gruff and low.

                “Hmm?”

                “Your question. Yeah, I’m still mad as hell.”


	18. Forward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She had a way of keeping him on the edge of his seat that was both unsettling as all hell and hypnotic.

                So things had gotten a little. Weird.

                He couldn’t stop watching her. Nearly tripped over his damn self trying going into the bottling plant. If he’d thought he’d been distracted _before._

                She hadn’t said a thing about what had happened at the Mystery Manse, so he hadn’t brought it up either, but they’d slept naked in that old waystation, and half-asleep had, er, repeated the act in the morning. She was decisive. He woke up before she did, but didn’t have the heart or the strength to move. The second she opened her eyes, though, she flipped onto her side and, hand on his chest, whispered real close in his ear. “Good morning, Gage.” The sound of his name on her lips sent a shiver down his spine. He had his self-control until she kissed his throat, breaking off with a tiny bite. He’d grabbed her and rolled them both until she was pinned under him. She was just as wild half-asleep in the morning as she was late at night—raking her nails up his back and grinding against him. Whispered all sorts of filthy fucking things in his ear. After, she’d smiled, stretched in the sunlight streaming through the windows, washed up, and gotten dressed. No fuckin’ nevermind. Well, alright then.

                But now he kept seeing her. Not like he hadn’t before; she’d stuck closer than Colter for the most part—kept him on-hand everywhere she went and talked the whole while like she’d die if she wasn’t babbling. She made her presence known when she was around. But now he kept noticing her hips. Rounded. She walked with a kinda sway, like she was dancing. She’d probably be real good at dancing, he thought. Old-world style, with lots of spinning and twisting. Hair was nice too. Soft when she cleaned it. Smelled good. He’d run his fingers through it. Hadn’t even thought about it at the time, but he was sure as hell thinking about it now. And worse, while he couldn’t stop thinking about how good she’d felt, he realized a little late that he’d forgotten all about how fucking mad he’d been about the stunt she’d pulled with the Granchester Mansion.

                The Bottling Plant was full of Nukalurks, which was a whole other issue. They pummeled their way through a good number of crabs without taking any hits, which was impressive. Here and there, Cori startled a nest and got hit, but he was quick enough with his shotgun to keep the injuries to a minimum. She was a fuckin’ force, just powering through, sipping Nuka Cola from the bottle, baseball bat in her free hand. Where all this damn confidence had come from, he didn’t know, but it was fun as all hell to watch. One of those skinny frog monsters—kings, she called ‘em—popped up right in front of her and she actually shouted “get some motherfucker” and swung for its head. Didn’t kill it—that fell to him, once he stopped laughing his ass off—but she did stun the hell out of the thing. Two parts terrifying, two parts crazy sexy. He’d thought that they were past the worst of it when they made it outside and through the factory. Big back lot, closed in by the L-shaped building on two sides, flanked by a shallow pond, and gated everywhere else. Not a bad place to set up shop.

                Then, as she’d been spitballing about building potential, a Nukalurk Queen exploded up out of the pond that fed into the river, showering them with droplets of water. He should have known. Shell had been half up out of the water as it slept, but he’d thought it was just more waterlogged garbage. Holy hell it was only a little shorter than the four-story building. He grabbed her by the back of her jacket and yanked her under the heavy metal stairs climbing up the side of the plant, sticking to the shadows. She turned around to face him, pressed close in their hiding spot. Couldn’t stay hidden for long, but a short chance to regroup was better than no chance at all.

                He started to say something to her but she grabbed the front of his shirt in her fists before he could get the words out.

                “Shut up and cover me.”

                She snatched his shotgun, leaving behind his slow-loading rifle and her bat. He was about to make a grab for her, but she was already out and racing up the stairs to the roof of the building. The Queen saw her and lunged, so he rolled out of cover and ran in the opposite direction. The motion drew attention, and the Queen turned to follow him, slamming its claws down on the pavement hard enough that each strike threatened to knock him off balance. No left feet now, goddamnit, or one of those claws would cut him in half.

                He got too far out of range and the Queen turned back to Cori, who was on the roof, looking down. Easier target. He’d run too fast and made himself a tougher catch and now _shit_ she was cornered on the roof. She peppered it with the shotgun, but she might as well have been throwing pebbles for how much that helped. Two seconds away from getting knocked off the roof, she made eye contact with him.

 _No_. _Don’t._

                He lined up a shot and the bullet sunk into the meat of the Queen’s arm. Old monster turned around way faster than he would have thought for something so fucking huge. He spotted Cori over the mountain of the Queen’s shell, body tensed. She backed up from the edge, but she was leaning in.

_Don’t you fuckin’ dare._

                She got a running start, built up speed, and launched herself off the roof. 

                Batshit crazy. That’s what she was. One-hundred-percent, completely, totally, undeniably off her fuckin’ rocker.

                Corinne jumped while the Queen was distracted, landing on the back of the beast. When the Queen whipped back around to see what had hit her, he watched Cori clawing for purchase, slipping down the hard, wet shell. She almost lost her grip completely, but finally found purchase on a massive barnacle and clung for dear life. The Queen didn’t seem to realize she had a passenger, and that was the new game. Keep her busy so Corinne didn’t get spiked into the ground. Got it.

                He fired to draw attention, and then doubled back towards cover. By the time he slid into a narrow alley between two walls, Cori had managed to make it all the way up to the top, where the hard shell met soft hide. She got up onto her knees, but the Queen moved and almost sent her flying down to the pavement. He almost bit a hole in his cheek. Then, while the Queen was trying to figure out what was wedged into her shell, Cori dug through her backpack and pulled out a plasma grenade. He could see the green from where he was. The Queen started to rear up, planning to tip Cori right off. Gage sprinted out to draw heat again, running the thing in circles. He dropped behind a busted car and peered over the edge. The queen was waddling over to him, but Cori was still riding high, one hand on her ruck and one holding onto the shell.

                Took him a second to put two and two together.

                She wouldn’t.

                He sprinted back, crossing the Queen to keep her attention.  Claws came down, staggering him for a second, but he was focused and quick, and the Queen missed. Got a better look at the Boss as he passed.

                She would.

                He made it to the gated corner and tuck-and-rolled behind a dumpster. It would effectively corner him, but if he was right about her plan, that was the least of his worries. When he spared a glance up from behind the dumpster, he saw her leaning over the space where the shell and hide met. He took another shot, and the Queen spotted him, pounding her way over. There was a gap. Between the shell and the Queen’s hide, there was a gap.  And she had stocked up on explosives with the Hubologists—pretty much filled her ruck with ‘em.

                What she had there was a big fucking bomb.

                The Queen slammed her claw down, busting the fence. Only a matter of time before she grabbed for the dumpster and crushed him with it. Come on, Boss. Just a little faster.

                He poked his head back out right as Corinne blasted the Queen with her shotgun to distract her. She was standing up on the thing’s back, blocking out the sun she was up so high. Backlit by a blinding glow, like some kind of comic book superhero. When the Queen started to rear to knock her down, she dropped the shot gun and he watched that damn thing skitter down the shell and break almost in two when it hit the pavement. She was gonna be facing the same if she didn’t hurry this the fuck up. She crouched back down and reached into her pack, and even from where he was he could see the glow. She pulled the pin on the plasma grenade, shoved it into her ruck, and then jammed the whole kit into the gap between the Queen’s shell and her hide. Then she disappeared, tumbling down the Queen’s back.

                Gage got himself as low to the ground as he could manage, body wedged between the old dumpster and the wall of the building.

                Fireworks—successive explosions. The sharp _pop_ of the frags. The lower booming sounds of plasma grenades. The high whistle of flashbangs. He covered his head with both arms, forehead kissing pavement.

                Took almost a whole minute for everything to finish detonating. He tried to remember what she had on her. It had been a lot and it had cost a lot of caps, he remembered that much. She was planning on bringing her haul back to base as surplus. By his count, she had eighteen frag grenades, ten plasma grenades, two flashbangs, six mines, a bottle of vodka that had probably just become a Molotov, and a baseball grenade. Last one was a novelty. Just bought it cuz she thought it was funny.

                What was left of the Queen hit the ground so hard she shook the foundations. The whole place smelled like rotten fish, burnt flesh, and gunpowder, and good luck to the gang who got saddled cleaning this place up because it was covered, walls and all, in guts. When he finally stood up, there were globs of Nukalurk everywhere. Cori hadn’t just blown a hole in the Queen, she had fucking splattered her. The shell wasn’t in too bad a shape, but Corinne had packed enough explosives into her homemade bomb to take the Queen’s head off and then some.

                Crazy bitch had done it. Holy fuck.

                Then he realized he didn’t see her. Anywhere.

                His heart was in his throat. Fuckin’ idiot; where the hell would she have even landed? He looked back and the Queen’s shell wasn’t in too many pieces, but it wasn’t impossible that Cori had been hit with shrapnel just the same. Blind panic. He started to croak her name, but his head was still ringing from the blast and he couldn’t walk straight.

                Think. Think, Porter, think. She had been on the shell. Slid down right before the explosion. Where would that land her? Even in a fog, he figured it out. The queen had been facing him, with her back to the pond she’d dredged up out of. The pond.

                He stumbled over to the edge of the slope and looked down into the water until she caught his eye. Weighted by her coat and face-down in the water. Hair twisting around her head like seaweed.

                He slipped down the embankment. The water was deep, but she wasn’t out too far. He waded in fighting the drag of his soaked jeans, but it was infuriating—all slow going. She had survived the Nukalurk Queen, damnit, she couldn’t drown _now._

                He finally made it, jerking her up out of the water so fast her head snapped back and then lolled against his arm. She was completely limp. The slog back to shore felt like it took hours. He dragged her up onto the pavement and laid her out flat, but she was practically grey and sure as shit wasn’t breathing, from what he could see. How the hell did it work again? He’d learned as a kid back on the farm. Press on the chest. Sharp and quick, but he couldn’t remember how many times. Plug her nose. Blow into her mouth. Press down on her sternum again. Her lips were cold. Her cheeks were clammy. Blow into her mouth. Press down on her chest. _Come on, Boss. Not like this._

                Finally, water burbled up past her lips. He turned her onto her side so she didn’t just choke all over again, and good thing he did because she coughed so hard she threw up, body curling into a ball. She wheezed for a second, but the color was coming back into her face, and her eyes finally rolled up and met his, alert.

                He leaned over her, supporting his weight on his hands, breathing hard like he’d just sprinted the length of the Commonwealth. He wanted to slap her and kiss her at the same time. They stayed there for a moment, practically elbow-deep in Nukalurk.

                After a long time, she broke the silence.

                “I feel like I’m dying.”

                “Yeah, well, you ain’t.” He sat back on his calves, trying to pluck his drenched shirt off his skin.

                “You’d think I’d be used to drowning by now.” She shot him a half-grin like all this was funny. She was still laying flat on her back on the pavement, chest heaving like she couldn’t get enough air. “Not my first rodeo, you know.”

                He didn’t know that, and he didn’t like the way she said it either.

                “Don’t make a fuckin’ habit out of this.”

                “Not trying to.”

                She looked him in the eyes, hair plastered to her forehead. A drop of water worked its way down from the bridge of her nose, rolling over her cheek and dripping off onto the pavement. This bright-eyed cocky Corinne had been real fun to watch until she’d nearly gotten herself blown to fuckin’ smithereens, and if he didn’t just want to shake the hell out of her for that alone. He wanted to shake her, and then he wanted to grab ahold of her, just to be sure she was solid and alive and breathing. Just to be sure. That was ridiculous. They had shit to do.

                She pulled herself up, let her head get used to sitting, and then struggled to her feet. He jumped up and held out his hands to steady her but she wobbled something fierce before finding her footing. No way she was gonna make it back to Nukaworld like this. They tracked the river upstream a ways, him keeping one hand under her elbow and the other around her back, holding her up. She walked like a drunken protectron. They stopped when the water was clear so they could bathe off the goop and grime. They’d have to burn their fucking clothes at this rate, but she’d shifted their spares and all her junk into his bag back for the most part back at the Hubologist camp when she was making room for the grenades. She’d lost half their stims and their entire food supply, but it could have been worse. For once, he was grateful that she scooped up spare clothes and frilly soaps wherever she went. If anything could cover up the reek of rotten fish, it was some of her ridiculous frilly soap.

                He helped her strip down, chucking her clothes as far away as he could before peeling off his own. No time for modestly; he kept a close eye on her while they washed. The water was only three feet deep or so, and clear enough that they could see the sandy ground below, but she’d had bad luck around water so far and Gage wasn’t gonna take any chances now that she’d proved she could cause trouble for him anywhere, anytime. ‘Specially since, when he turned his back for two seconds to check the perimeter, he heard a splash. Of all the—he whipped back around, but she had just sat herself down in the stream, letting the water run around her. She tipped her head back, scrubbing hard. Thick white foam swirled around her and she sighed, happy as a clam. Well. At least one of them was comfortable.

                She had at least five or six massive bruises forming over her body, but he still liked looking at her a whole hell of a lot. There was something just real nice about the way she was shaped. A lot of the people he met were sharp edges. She was all smooth curves. The biggest bruise started just over the swoop of her hip and crept down about mid-thigh, even spilling onto her ass. Must have been about the length of his forearm and just as wide across. He pressed a finger to her skin and she winced.

                No idea why he did that.

                “Looks bad, Boss.” He pulled his hand back and scrubbed his scalp again.

                “Feels pretty bad too.”

                He’d find a stim for her when they had a minute.

                They must have washed every inch of skin twice. Used up the whole bottle of fancy-ass soap and sat in the water for long enough that the sun had made it past the highest point and was on its way towards the hills. Past lunchtime. Late afternoon.

                She crawled up out of the water and they sat in the sun drying off. At least it was a warm day. Cori wrapped her arms around her knees and let the water flow over her fingers, creating tiny eddies in the stream. For a second, everything was different. They weren’t Overboss and right-hand man. They weren’t _anybody._ Just two nobodies sitting in the sun, naked as the day they were born, staring off at the horizon. All quiet. He couldn’t remember a single second of quiet since she’d blown into his life.

                Finally, she dug through his pack and found her spare set of clothes. Jeans, a t-shirt with the Kiddie Kingdom castle on it, and fresh socks with tiny bottlecaps on ‘em. She dunked her boots in the river, but that was the best she could do for now. No spare boots on hand, for all the junk she made him carry. When she was dressed again, she started chucking things his way. Army pants she must have stolen from the Gunners. Button-up shirt she’d nabbed while they were clearing the Gulch, leather vest complete with metal sheriff’s badge attached. Like a goddamned cowboy-soldier. She took one look at him and laughed so hard she almost doubled over.

                “Yeah, yeah. Real fuckin’ funny.”

                “Howdy, pardner!”

                “Boss.”

                “Giddyup!”

                He wanted to shut her the hell up, but she _had_ almost drowned. Besides, he’d never seen her laugh so hard like that. Eyes crinkled, tears beading up at the corners, doubled over. He shut his trap and let her giggle. They packed up their things and he laced his boots. She was steadier on her feet now, so they made their way back to Nukatown. Back to the grind.


	19. On Top of the World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She and Gage had cleared the parks and now? Now there was only one thing left to do to lock it all in.

                Alright. Okay. So things had gotten complicated recently. Not like she hadn’t been trying her damndest to make this as complicated as possible, but now that it was out of her system, she could focus. She’d fucked Gage. Thinking it sounded…bad. Real bad. Like “how-did-this-get-so-out-of-control” bad. But she’d done it and now all that tension between them should evaporate and they could go back to companionable silences and quiet arguments while she returned to the matter at hand.

                That matter being that she was in _so_ _much_ danger.

                They had all the territories. They had the haunted mansion. All she had to do was light the place up and she’d be sitting pretty and she could settle into her role as Raider Queen. Not what she’d been expecting when she stumbled into a death trap, but not bad? She supposed? Could be worse, so she’d take her blessings and run with what she had.

                The Power Plant was overrun by ferals, but now that a conquered Nuka World was in sight, everyone was extra solicitous when she shouted through the streets looking for volunteers for a foot-army to help her take the final territory. _Now_ they help. Better late than never, she thought bitterly as she looked up at the grey expanse of the Power Plant.

                The raiders mowed down the ferals with a vicious glee that was downright sobering. A member of the Pack snapped the arms off a feral one after the other, almost losing her face in the process, and her friends fucking laughed. They didn’t even kill the poor thing; they let it flail and screech and sure, Corinne wasn’t super sympathetic towards zombies, but it was a long damn time before the woman got sick of her little game and killed the thing. Overboss fucks up even once and they’d kill her with that same bloodthirsty glee. Better to not think about that.

                Gage was good about keeping things moving. A feral launched itself out from behind a wall of terminals and grabbed her by the hair, almost jerking her off her feet. Gage stopped, pivoted, shot the thing dead in one, and then grabbed her forearm to pull her back onto her feet. She stuck close to him after that because, awkward or not, he was going to keep her alive. He had an eye on her at all times, and between Gage keeping her in one piece and the gangs tearing ghouls apart left and right, she barely even had to raise her gun.

                They reached the control room as her raiders cleared the last of the Plant. The sun was setting and night weighed down over everything, dampening the sounds of gunfire and cheers and shouts. In the dark, everything was hazy. The raider mob, the parks in the distance, Gage. Everything. She slammed her palm down on the button and the parks burned to life, igniting in the distance. Fireworks. Back in business.

                Nuka World was back on the fucking map.

                She tracked back out of the control room and faced the mob. So many raiders, standing before her on the roof of this place, faces turned to the horizon.

                Gage boosted her up on top of the control room. She scrambled onto the roof and stood up, looking down at the sea of Raiders below from the main building’s roof. It was dark, but the light from the other parks reached them even all the way out here, on the ass-end of nowhere. Bright reds, greens, blues off in the distance. Looping music from each park, playing in a faint overlapping drone. Power was on, alright; they had just put Nuka World back on the fucking map. Could probably see it from outer space. She raised her fist and the crowd quieted. Radiers from every gang had shown up to turn on the power, and that show of solidarity was either very good or very dangerous. Either way, she could feel the hum of the crowd in her bones and the lights on her skin and she was so fucking alive she felt like the electricity in the air was coursing through her too. They had too many people—the ghouls and bugs hadn’t stood a chance. The roof was jam-packed with some of the most heavily-armed, sick sons of bitches in the Commonwealth, and she was standing at the head.

                Holy shit.

                Nate had always said she could fire up a room. If only he could see her now.

                “We’ve taken back the parks!” She had to shout to make sure everyone heard her, but when she paused, the crowd broke into cheers. Raucous shouting from Pack Animals and Operators alike. One Disciple clapped another on the shoulder so hard she almost fell over. The effect was immediate. For one moment, tensions melted away and everyone let that thought sink in. They’d taken the parks. All they had to do was settle in. They could probably focus on expansion in less than a year.

                When the cheering died down a bit, she stared at the crowd until she had everyone’s attention. She felt like her eighth-grade prep school teacher. Who would have known she’d channel Mrs. Peterson to command the attention of a bunch of raiders? Life’s funny like that, she guessed.

                “Tomorrow night, I will meet with the gang leaders to talk about territory divisions. Until then, head back to Nuka Town and drink to the new Nuka World!”

                She had them at “drink.” The crowd erupted into cheers—louder now with the promise of getting piss drunk while someone else tackles the pedantic shit—and the partying kicked off almost immediately. Groups broke off and started the short walk back to the main park. She imagined a lot would land in the streets; she and Gage would be stepping over piles of drunk raiders when they finally made the long walk home. She’d have to count up how many she found sleeping in the boats in the middle of the pond when she got back. There were always a few after a night of drinking.

                Gage helped her down off the roof, hands on her hips. Wide palms, fingers brushing the skin of her lower back, raising goosebumps. Heat radiated off his chest. He set her down between himself and the wall, and a pleasant quiver tripped down her spine. God, he was tall. Tall and broad and he smelled like earth and gunpowder and there was a fine sheen of sweat across his forehead. He wasn’t even that close to her; why was her heart in her throat? She’d thought she was past this, but then he started to pull back and she skimmed her nails down his forearms without even thinking to do it, like she wasn’t in control of her own damn hands. He exhaled in a quiet huff. Memory sharp and searing—his hands on her waist and his mouth on her throat and his tongue on her skin, reeling right back to that cabin on the ass-end of nowhere, low moans and quiet gasps. A shiver rippled over her.

                Get it together. Flirting (literally) with danger. Death and destruction and all that.

                His stare bored into her. Her pulse stuttered under her skin. She raised her chin in challenge. His tongue flicked out over his lips.

                She didn’t break eye-contact as she backed up towards the control room and he followed like he was drawn along a wire. Alright. Just one more time and then she’d be able to let this whole ridiculous thing go. Might as well celebrate a little herself. After this, she’d call it quits and keep her hands to herself. She made it through into the control room with Gage at her heels and he slammed the door shut the second they were out of sight, leaving only the glow of the parks through the window to light the place. Gage was lit up in blues and reds; shadows obscuring his face until he stepped closer, looming over her. His eyes fixed on hers. This wasn’t the most private spot, but it was dark, people were leaving, and she’d earned this, damnit.

                Well. No time like the present.

                She grabbed the bars on his armor and jerked him down to her face. He kissed her hard, one hand cupping her chin as the other slid down her side. She kissed back harder and with a bite. Had the temperature just spiked? She could have sworn it had gotten hotter around here. He groaned and ducked in again, tugging on her bottom lip with his teeth. So close, pressed up against her. He barely let her push him back enough to get that clunky armor frame off so she could touch his chest, because if she was going to do something reckless, she was going to do it all the way. When she had him how she wanted him, Gage walked her back against the wall with his hands on her hips, thumbs pressed into the hollow dip in her bones. The long line of his body crushed hers. He grabbed her ass and hauled her up off her feet against him. Holy shit. She made a sound she wasn’t super proud of and squirmed, but he didn’t budge until he felt like it, letting go for just long enough to flip her around so that her cheek pressed against the cool cement. She planted her hands flat on the wall and rocked her hips back enough to draw his attention. He was already on her. Thumbs hooked in the waistband of her jeans. Fingers resting over her hips. She could feel her heart in her throat.

                “Great speech, Boss.” His breath traced across the back of her neck. She shivered.  

                “Yeah?”

                “Yeah. Inspiring.” One thumb rubbed circles around the ridge of her hip bone. The other traced the line of her waistband until he hit the button fly securing her pants.

                “Did I inspire _you_?” Her voice was low, but didn’t sound half as calm and collected as she would have liked. They were both exhausted and full of adrenaline—floating in this liminal space where she was too tired to care if they were caught. If he stopped touching her for even a second, she was afraid she’d melt into a puddle on the floor and die.

                They shouldn’t be doing this again. Once was one thing—a fling—but twice? That said, she didn’t let him take his hands off her for a second. She dug her nails into his skin and anchored him close, though it wasn’t like he was struggling to get away. One of his boots nudged her foot, widening her stance just a little. It was like she was in one of those saucy films—the suspected criminal being frisked by the big, strong guard or something. She felt his leg between hers and rocked against him. She never had been good at playing it coy.

                “Uh-huh.” One hand slipped into her pants. Fingers stretched out, teasing. His knee knocked hers apart a little further.

                “Well, we should celebrate.” Her breathing stuttered.

                “What did you have in mind?” Husky. Almost a growl. His lips brushed her throat in a way that made her heart stop. Teeth skimmed skin. Breath tickled when he sighed.

                It was so fucking good to be the Boss.

                She was about to respond but he seemed to predict exactly what she was about to say, and he was damned good at following orders. She was grateful for the cool cement against her chest and cheek, because without it, she would have toppled over. Her legs trembled and then all-out shook. He was going to help her celebrate, alright. Gage was an expert. He barely even had to touch her, quick fingers dancing over her skin.

                Raiders milled around on the other side of the wall, already getting drunk from the sounds of it. Someone had thought ahead and brought liquor. Patting each other on the backs, bragging, and probably breaking shit. Someone could walk into the control room any second now, if they wanted to. Who knows, maybe a couple of raiders would have the same ideas she did and try to sneak into the same room for a little celebration of their own, and wouldn’t _that_ be one hell of an uncomfortable workplace interaction. She didn’t want to get caught like this, but still. There was a bit of a thrill in the danger of it all. Pressure building up at the base of her spine. She bit her lip. He ground his palm against her. Her knees knocked. He didn’t let up. Her fingers wrapped around his arm, nails digging into his skin until she was in danger of drawing blood. When his free hand started traveling up under her shirt, the drag of his calloused fingertips over her skin melted her.

                The thing he did—quick and rough, but tender enough to keep her panting. Then slow. Moving in and out of her so slow she thought she’d scream. In minutes, she was a mess—static spreading out under her skin. He had her wrapped around his finger. She almost laughed—was that a _pun?_ His palm rubbed against her in just the right way. She was dizzy, like she was up real high and looking down. Must have been making noise, because he groaned and then slid his free hand out from under her bra to hold it over her mouth. Arms like steel bars over her chest and across her waist, holding her still. Her fingers twined with his. Then, fireworks. Bright, hot, searing. Turning the power on all over again.

                Gentleman that he was, he waited until she didn’t writhe every single time he moved and then buttoned her jeans back up and pat her hip. Her whole body was so relaxed that she could have fallen asleep standing up.

                “Damn good speech.”

                “Mmm.” She couldn’t string sounds together to make words, but nodded as she caught her breath, turning to lean back against the wall. Thoughts were pleasantly scattered, like her brain was rebooting. He adjusted himself. There was still activity on the other side of the control room, but people were focused on their own celebrations. They probably hadn’t noticed her and Gage slipping away together into the control room, and if anyone asked, there were myriad reasons she could come up with that didn’t involve her second-in-command fingering her against a wall.

She looked back at the wall of terminals and switchboards and small, blinking lights. Through the windows, she could see all of Nukaworld,                 lit up like a beacon. It was late and she was so bone tired that she could have fallen asleep on the floor right there, but they should probably start walking so they could make it home before dawn. Besides, she had a favor to return when they made it back to base. She looked over at Gage, painted in a faint red glow from the Galactic Zone. Long and lean, already grabbing for his discarded armor. Sucking in a breath through his teeth when he adjusted his pants. Oh yeah. She would definitely return the favor the second they got back to base. Just one more time, to be fair and equitable. And then that would be the last of it.

                “We headed out, Princess?”

                Princess. He’d never called her anything but “Boss” or “Cori” before, as far as she could remember. She rolled the word around in her head for a second. Princess. She liked that.


	20. Game Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If she's had a plan all along, she sure as hell hasn't shared it with him.

                He watched her sink further into the tub, head tipped back against the wall.

                “Why didn’t I do this before?” Her contented sigh scattered some of the bubbles that had crept up around her chin.

                “Because we hadn’t gotten the plumbing straightened out?”

                “Ugh. Don’t talk plumbing to me while I’m relaxing. Christ.” She stuck one leg up into the air and rolled her ankle, toes stretched up. Probably thought she was being real cute about it. He almost chuckled before he caught himself. No time to get wrapped up in that shit. They had work to do. Couldn’t burn the whole afternoon in bed when she had the gang leaders coming around later that night.

                “We have to decide what we’re doing with the parks now that we’ve got ‘em. If we don’t move soon, Gunners sure as shit will, and then we’ll have to take them all over again.” He sat down on the lid of the toilet, next to the tub. She looked up at him all doe-eyed.

                “Can’t a gal catch a break?”

                “Once she’s got her house in order, sure.” He pulled out the torn, mangled map of Nuka World and held it up. “But for now, she’s got shit to do.”

                “You’re no fun.”

                Corinne brushed her hair over one shoulder, buried to her collarbones in suds. Pretty little thing. Smelled all sweet and soft and inviting; it was real hard to keep himself focused, but someone had to keep them on track.

                “One of the gangs is going to get shorted, Princess, and you’ve gotta figure out who. And then you gotta figure out how to keep that from shooting us in the foot.”

                She bit her lip and glanced at the map in his hand. Corinne had probably memorized it by now, since she looked at it so damn much, but it was still a long moment before she finally looked back up at him. She drummed her fingers on the rim of the tub, her nails clicking against the porcelain.

                “I have an idea, but you won’t like it.”

                “I don’t like most of your ideas.”

                “Well, you _really_ won’t like this one.” She dried her hand on the towel hanging beside the bath and pointed to the Safari. “Pack here.”

                “That’s what I figured.”

                “That isn’t the part you won’t like. Shut it for a second and hear me out.”

                She pointed to the Bottling plant next. “Disciples.”

                “Operators.” Galactic Zone.

                “Pack again.” Kiddie Kingdom.

                 “Operators.” Gulch.

                She was going to short the Disciples and, worse, Nisha. He was halfway to saying something about that, but the look on her face stopped him. Hear her out. Alright. Fine.

                “I know that this means Nisha will hate me, but I have an idea about how we can keep her happy. I say we give her the Bottling Plant, which has the most resources and indoor spaces like she likes, and then two territories outside the parks. She’ll have fewer resources but more ground overall.”

                “I don’t know how you’ll get her to go for that,” he said, half to her and half to himself. Corinne pointed to one of the circles they’d drawn to mark landmarks. Grandchester, the haunted mansion.

                “She can have Grandchester, which is already stocked with supplies and relatively fortified. We’ll also give her the Red Rocket.” She pointed to the fill-up station to the north-east. “Her people will be scattered over the map, making them less of a threat to us here at Nukatown.”

                “She’ll know what you’re doin’.”

                “Maybe.”

                “She’ll skin you alive.”

                “Maybe. But we can’t let her get too powerful.” Corinne sat up in the tub, sloshing soapy water onto the floor at his feet. “The Disciples aren’t afraid of anything. If we let them group up in the parks, they’ll eventually get impatient and start a war. The Pack and Operators want to keep to themselves, but it’s only a matter of time before Nisha and her goons decide they don’t care about keeping the peace. If they’re all spread out though? They have incentive to behave.”

                Well. He couldn’t say she hadn’t thought it through. He looked at the map again and tried to picture it. The Pack had roughly one-hundred and fifty people, scattered around Nuka World. Thirty or so would probably stay at the Amphitheater with Mason (Pack sticks together). Mason could divide the rest and have his higher-ups lead them to the two new territories, which would also have the benefit of splitting them up a bit, since the parks were on either side of Operator territory. The Operators were flagging in numbers—sitting at somewhere around seventy recruits. Most would leave the Parlor; they were already overflowing the tiny place. Knowing Mags, she’d keep William, her scientist pet, and maybe two guards. That would leave most of their numbers to be split between the two spots, the Plant and the Gulch. Not bad. On the end, they’d have Disciples. Probably numbered just over a hundred. Nisha would keep Savoy and Dixie for sure. Maybe a few other top-dogs, but probably no more than ten people, knowing her. That would leave around ninety, divided into three separate territories. She could split them evenly, but she would probably pick three of her most level-headed people to lead three squads—the biggest roosting at the Bottling to keep up Disciple presence, and the smaller two divided equally between her two other outposts. One was pretty close. The Red Rocket was just outside the parks, close to Bradburton. But this plan would also have her sending a team to the far reaches of Nukaworld territory, all the way out west just before the no-man’s land. It would give her a leg-up on expanding westward, and the place was still stocked with years of hoarded gear and tech, but it would also separate a number of her people by about a day’s walk. Plus, the place was definitely haunted as shit, something he hoped impacted morale.

                “It could work, but I don’t think you’re making friends here, Princess.”

                “I don’t care about making friends. I care about keeping this place balanced.” She slid further down under a thick blanket of bubbles until she was sunk up to her chin. Must have used the whole bottle of fancy soap she’d made him grab from the old giftshop she’d ransacked. Corinne loved that kinda junk, he noticed. The impractical stuff—like baths and primping and all that. He’d washed more in the month he’d known her than in his whole life before, just because she did. She liked the soaps, perfumes, make-up, little baubles and shit. Must have filled her room up with cutesy outfits she couldn’t even use. She wore the same two pairs of jeans and armor everywhere she went because cute skirts wouldn’t stop bullets or protect you from bugs, but she still had a stack of clothes by her dresser that she was just sitting on. There was no sense in collecting all that crap. That said, he still had a necklace in his pocket with a small silver six-shooter on it that he’d scooped up at the Gulch. Seemed like the kinda thing that would suit her. He’d been meaning to leave it on her desk for a couple weeks now.

                “The extra territory should keep Nisha happy. She’ll kick up a fuss, but she’ll see the potential in expanding. We’ll talk about building onto her two extra territories. Building will take time, and we can keep control of who gets what outside Nukaworld to keep things balanced, but she’ll like that she already has more room to grow.” Corinne ran some of the soap up and over her shoulder, stretching her neck. “If she decides she doesn’t like it once we’ve started building, she’ll be too spread out to retaliate without us noticing.”

                “She’ll realize that the Red Rocket doesn’t have any defenses.” Gage looked back down at the map. “The parks are bigger and have walls. Plus, they’re full of salvage to build turrets and defenses.”

                “Grandchester is full of Gunner tech. They’ll even get a couple of Assaultrons out of this deal, and we’ll make that clear. We’ll have the other two gangs help fortify the Red Rocket as a show of goodwill.”

                “I don’t think Mason, Mags, and William have a speck of goodwill in ‘em, Boss.”

                “Doesn’t matter. They don’t want to fight Nisha, right?”

                “Right.”

                “Then they’ll do it.” She crossed her arms behind her head and closed her eyes like this was some pre-war ad for luxury soaps. “If one gang picks a fight, everyone dies. If we keep it that way, no one will want to step out of line.”

                “I hope you’re sure they’ll do what you want, Boss, because if you aren’t, you’re the first one to get shot.”

                A smile quirked at the corner of her lips, cocky as hell. She kicked her feet up out of the water and propped them up on the lip of the tub by the spigot. One shin was bruised, and there was a healing gash along the other calf, probably from fighting the Nukalurks at the Bottling Plant. Her ankle was still a little swollen from when she’d rolled it walking back from the power plant. Streams of water and little splotches of soap trickled down and dripped back into the bath. He followed the slope down to the rounds of her thighs, just barely visible in the tub. Gage shifted and forced himself to look back at her face. Her eyes were open, trained on him.

                “I’m not sure of much, Porter Gage,” she said, grinning like she knew something he didn’t. “But I’m damn sure you won’t let them shoot me.” 


	21. Tightrope

                The _ka-chunk_ of a shotgun being readied greeted her when she stepped out of the bath. Just Gage, preparing for the meeting, but still. It was an ominous way to kick off negotiations.

                He set the gun down on the rolling cart she’d pushed behind the bar, within arm’s reach. She didn’t have to look over her shoulder to know he was watching her, his stare intent as she got dressed. Serious.

                Corinne found the best pair of underwear she could scrounge up, a bra with remnants of lace, and the nicest outfit she could find from what she’d scavenged. The skirt was a little too snug to zip and the shirt under her blazer was stained with who-knows-what, but at least the blazer was in decent shape. Plus, she hadn’t worn a pencil skirt in so long she couldn’t remember. She’d forgotten how powerful it made her feel—just a bolt of fabric stretching from her waist to her knees but it felt like slipping on armor; it reminded her of standing before a jury and making her fucking magic happen. Crisp and confident. One of the only shreds of her past life that didn’t ache like a bruise.

                “You ain’t got nothin’ on, Princess.” Gage’s good eye traced over her shoulders and down her front, scanning. Nothing but fabric between her skin and a bullet. To him, she may as well have been stripped naked. Her feet slid into the Cappy-crimson pumps she’d swiped out of an abandoned clothing shop around the Market in Nuka Town.

                “This is better than armor, Gage.” She brushed her hands down her skirt and pinned her dry hair up like she remembered—out of her face and swept into a simple, utilitarian knot on the back of her skull, confident and clean. Corinne turned to dig through the dresser’s top drawer. Somewhere around here was that damn lipstick she’d bought off one of the scavvers at the Market. No eyeliner or concealer for the stress breakout on her forehead, but she’d make do. Always did.

                “Nice jacket and all, but it ain’t gonna stop a bullet.”

                “Blazer.”                                                                                                                                               

                “Whatever.”

                “And it won’t stop a bullet because there won’t be any bullets aimed my way.” Her fingers wrapped around the metal tube and somewhere in the back of her head, her ex-girlfriend from college whispered something about preservatives in make-up. She didn’t care if she was kissing uranium, so long as this lipstick was still good.

                “And what makes you think that?”

                Corinne swiped crimson over her bottom lip first, and then traced the bow of her upper lip. Pressed her lips together. Puckered. And then cleaned up her lines.

                “Because they will be too busy accepting my deal.”

                Gage looked her up and down and took a deep breath that left him as a sigh. All this rigmarole probably seemed ridiculous to him. First, she soaks in perfumed soap in a tub. Then she drapes herself in unarmored pre-war clothes and smudges old makeup over her mouth. Does she strap a gun to her thigh? No. Slip something bulletproof under her jacket? No. He had no reason to think she was ready, and she had no reason to feel any more powerful than someone bringing a blazer to a gunfight.

                She felt like a loaded pistol.

                If she’d learned anything in this life, it was that preparation didn’t mean shit. She’d prepared to raise a child, take over as partner at the law firm, and grow old and die in the suburbs. Where had that gotten her? Widowed, childless, and living rough with raiders in a post-apocalyptic hell. No, preparation didn’t get her anywhere. Confidence and gumption did. And if gumption had gotten her this far, why not see just how far it could take her?

                “Would you get me a glass of water?” The voice that came out of her mouth was both her own and not. Level, smooth, sure. It sounded like silk over icy granite. Like painted nails and a smoking gun. Like the woman who had won the Muller case for her firm, and had married her high school sweetheart Nathan Kowalski, and had adopted the sweetest baby boy…

                She killed that line of thought. It was both her own and not, right now. Some part of that voice belonged to a different Cori—a Corinne whose ghost she channeled but didn’t want to completely summon. That Corinne didn’t know how to hold a gun, afterall.

                She crossed the room, passing Gage, and sat herself at the tall stool behind the bar. The sun set, bleeding across the horizon as she watched it sink into the violet-dark sky. Stars emerged from hiding. Gage handed her the glass of water. It was more a formality than anything; she’d always had a glass of water at her table during trials.

                The gang leaders filtered in on their own damn time. She’d sent a kid out to summon them for “sunset,” but evidently, that was subject to debate. Mags and William turned up first, right after the sun had tucked in for the night. She’d had a feeling they’d follow directions the best. Nisha was next, slinking into the room with the confidence of someone who thinks they’ve won over everyone else. Mason turned up a few minutes after, fashionably late but in high spirits, so at least that could work in her favor.

                “Thank you for joining me.” Corinne spread out the map on the counter and gestured for all parties to sit. Mags, Mason, and Nisha obliged, but William stood behind his sister, ready just in case. From what she understood of William, this was standard, but it was still a little unnerving. Cori tamped that feeling down and took a sip of her water. Her hands smoothed over the ragged paper map.

                “I have assigned territories based on what seems most equitable. We will discuss terms once all territory assignments have been established.” She kept her breathing level. Gage shifted behind her. Mags leaned forward. Mason’s eyes were trained on her. Nisha grinned, her lips twisted up under the hard line of her mask. Full attention.

                Here goes nothing.

                “The Pack gets Kiddie Kingdom and the Safari. The Operators will take the Gulch and the Galactic Zone.” She leaned her elbows on the table and clasped her hands together. Always worked when she was leveling with clients. This was not much different, if she didn’t consider that each and every person in this room had a gun and could shoot her without a moment’s notice. “The Disciples will get the largest territory, the Bottling Plant, and then two holdings outside of the parks. The Grandchester Mansion, and a Red Rocket to the north of the Bottling plant.”

                Like she had set off a bomb. Mags looked back to William, and his hand darted to his hip, where he no doubt had some kind of weapon. Mason opened his mouth and closed it, and then leaned back to look at the other gang leaders. Nisha’s spine was steel. The moment dragged as everyone decided how to respond.

                “Well,” Nisha growled. Her fingers traced over her territories on the map, following the distance between points “A,” “B,” and “C.” With the lights overhead up and working, her shadow swallowed the map when she stood.

                “Works for the Pack.” Mason’s grin was so self-satisfied it felt confrontational. He drummed his fingers on the counter, palms smearing paint like a rainbow over the veneer.

                 “Must I be the one to say it?” Mags glared out of the corner of her eye. “Three territories is ridiculous. The Disciples don’t even have enough people to _fill_ four different territories.”

                Nisha breathed out through her nose. “Trust me, Maggie dear, people come flocking when they see you have some real power. Who knows? Maybe we’ll pick up some Operators when I gut you like a pig.”

                “You are rather optimistic for someone whose forces will be so spread-out, _Nisha.”_

                “I don’t need optimism. The Operators—”

                “That is _enough._ ” Cori sat up straight and looked Mags in the eye, and then Nisha. Nisha stared at her for a long moment, eyes blank behind the dense screen. Hard to gauge what she was thinking with that massive fucking mask covering her face, but Cori imagined that, whatever scene was playing behind her eyes, it was more than likely violent. Still, Nisha’s silence was satisfying. A foothold. Mags and Mason remained quiet as well, waiting.

                “Now. To level the playing field, The Operators and The Pack will provide resources to fortify the Station and even the playing field. They will assist in constructing walls around the territory, and buildings within. Nisha and I will oversee construction to ensure that it provides the Disciples with a suitable space.”

                Still quiet. Everyone watching her.

                “Grandchester was held by an escaped gunner and is full of pristine Gunner tech—weapons, a few assaultrons, some other bots, and automated turrets. All you have to do is get them back online and you have defenses. Additionally, the extra tech and resources surpass what Gage and I found in the parks. With that, this shakes out fair. The Disciples get about equal land and resources as the Operators and the Pack. We regain our footing and build up our numbers. Then we work on spreading out more into smaller territories.” She steepled her fingers the way she’d learned to in the courtroom, leaned forward, and made eye contact with each gang member in turn. Mason. Mags. William. Nisha. The room was silent. “Everyone gets a fair deal, everyone keeps the peace.”

                She felt rather than saw him come up behind her. Corinne didn’t spare a glance back but she could feel the heat from his body radiating out, a comforting presence. Well, Gage would keep the peace, even if no one else in this room did. Calm settled over her shoulders and she straightened up again.

                “This is how I’ve divided the place up. If you don’t like it,” she said, “you can show yourself out, and I’ll give your territory to the ones who stay.”

                Nisha spoke through her teeth. “On one condition.”

                “That is?”

                “Disciples get the first new territory when we expand.”

                The room was quiet. Mason, Mags, and William started at her, wondering what she would do. Compromise was an important element of leadership, but giving into demands wasn’t quite so strong. But it wasn’t unfair. Two small territories, no matter how well-stocked, would never be the same physical size as a full theme park. Besides, they wouldn’t start expanding until every gang was settled, so it was safer to keep the Disciples happy for now. She’d leave the expansion issue for future Cori.

                “Alright. First new territory goes to the Disciples. Second will go to whoever gets their shit together the fastest.”

                “Boss—” Mags started.  

                “Did I stutter?”

                There was an uneasy silence, but the twins didn’t dare speak up for fear of losing one of their two parks, Mason seemed to understand he was getting a fair shake in all this, and Nisha was probably realizing that this was the best bet she was going to get. It was done. She’d gotten everyone through negotiations. Mags and William sat for a moment before turning around—Mags first, followed close by William—and stalking out of her quarters. Mason nodded, stretched his arms over his head, and said “g’night, Boss” before heading out. Nisha was the last sitting. She smiled in a way that would have been quite friendly, were it not for the blood-curdling stillness and empty, lifeless stare.

                “Good to know where you stand, Overboss.” Without another word, she stalked to the lift on the other side of the room and left.

                Corinne and Gage sat there at the bar without moving until the sounds of Nukatown died down. The gang leaders were probably meeting with their people right about now. No promises what tomorrow would bring, but this was better than what could have happened. Well, there would be some kind of hell to pay later and that was a guarantee, but no one had died today, so that was a plus. She was just glad they’d avoided an all-out war in her bedroom. Progress. In a way.

                Gage set a hand on her shoulder and mumbled “could have gone worse.”

                “You think so?” Corinne sipped the water he’d set out for her, all the steel in her spine eking out her fingertips.  

                “Sure. I coulda had to shoot somebody.”

                He leaned back against the counter beside where she was sitting, elbows on the bar. She tipped her head onto his shoulder and closed her eyes, if just for a second. His skin was warm and he was solid as ever.

                “You’re right. You could have had to shoot somebody.”

                “I’m sure there’s still time, in case there’s anyone who needs shooting.” He jostled his arm just slightly and her head followed the movement. “Fallin’ asleep?”

                “It’s been a long day.”

                He nodded, letting her rest for a moment. Then, slowly, he reached over and scooped her up. Just gathered her up into his arms like it was nothing. She’d be lying if she said there wasn’t something real nice about that. She didn’t want to open her eyes, so she curled against his chest. Careful not to wake her, he brought her over to her bed, set her on the mattress, and covered her up with her blanket.

                “Get some sleep, Princess.”

                She didn’t open her eyes, but they both knew she wasn’t asleep. She hummed appreciatively and listened as his footsteps padded down the stairs to the stage and back. The door slid open and then shut behind him, leaving her alone in the quiet of her room.

 

                That night, she had another dream about them. She shouldn’t have been surprised—getting all dressed up in those clothes and stepping back into her old life like that? Practically begging ghosts to pay a visit.

                Nathan again, only this time, he was standing in the Institute. She was wearing the clothes Preston had given her and was holding the gun Mama Murphy had thrust into her hands before she left Sanctuary. Crusted in dirt and sweat and old blood from killing the Courser. Hadn’t changed her clothes or slept or eaten a proper meal in days. She looked feral, and she only noticed that because the Institute was gleaming—every surface white or silver and shining. Her haggard face reflected off the glass-walled room where the little five-year-old boy slept soundly.

                Nate leaned up against the glass room in his military uniform, legs crossed at the ankle.

                “Hey there, pumpkin.”

                She wanted to say something, but her mouth felt like it was filled with sand.

                “What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue?”

                Her lips were forming shapes but there was no sound coming out. Nate glanced into the room, his eyes landing on the little synth boy.

                “What happened to our baby?” A thread of worry slipped into his tone, his arms folded just a little too tight over his chest. The tiny lines that had started forming at the corners of his eyes creased deeper when he squinted to look at her. “What happened to _you?”_

                “Nate—”

                “You left him, didn’t you?”

                “He’s not—”

                “You left him here. Like a labrat. You ran away again.” Nathan stood upright, his fists clenched. "You said you’d stop running away. You promised. ‘Till death do us part’? Remember?”

                Corinne wanted to back away, but she was rooted to the spot like the soles of her feet had grown into the tiled floor. Nate stepped forward.

                “I didn’t run, I—”

                “Bullshit, _princess._ You ran. You always ran.”

                The sharp edges in his voice woke up the child and he sat up in bed, gaze darting frantically around the room. The synth child finally looked at her and it was immediate; his legs scrunched up to his chest and he screamed. She looked back at him, but she couldn’t see him well past her own reflection. Dark-ringed, bloodshot eyes. Chapped lips. Greying skin splotched with the bright red flushes of exertion. Hair matted with grime, stringy in some places and knotted. Draped in baggy, bloody clothes and armed to the teeth. Any kid would scream at her. She looked like a monster.

                She turned to look back at Nathan, but he was gone. And the kid was gone. And it was just her.

                Alone.


	22. Rollercoaster

                Christ, she made him so fuckin’ furious sometimes. She was starting to get him all kinds of twisted-up, wrapped around her goddamned pinky finger so he couldn’t stay mad at her, even when he had a fuckin’ good reason to be mad at her.

                She was so ridiculously good at fucking up his day. It wasn’t even funny. She’d do some stupid shit like go charging into a fight, expecting him to follow behind and clean up her mess so she didn’t get herself killed. She’d mouth off. She’d push his buttons. Then she’d bat her eyelashes or slip her hand down the front of his pants and he’d be so turned around that he wouldn’t know which way was up or what in the hell was happening. She’d startle a den of molerats and then pucker up those red lips and blow him a kiss. She’d jump-tackle a Gunner twice her size and then grind herself against him in some backwater ruin. No sense of self-preservation, no sense of forethought, no sense period. A goddamned tornado without the decency to realize she was spinning. Cori was a fuckin’ mess, and she was gonna drag his dumb ass down with her. And worse, he was going to keep letting her, because he was starting to like it.

                So, when she told him she wanted to free all the traders at the market, he was both shocked and not at the same damn time. Of course she wanted to do some stupid shit. Wouldn’t be a normal day with the Overboss if she _didn’t_ make him do something dangerous and stupid.

                “Look,” she said, buck-naked and draped over his chest, hair a tousled mess. “I’ll hold with a lot, but this is wrong and dangerous. Do you know the kind of hurt we’d be in if they got themselves together and rioted?”

                “They ain’t gonna. That’s why we have the collars.” He wanted to push her off of him so he could get a look at her face, but he didn’t have the energy to move. She’d seen to that.

                “And if they deactivate the collars? I don’t mind fighting for what we need, but we don’t need them. I’m no saint, but I’m not a slaver.”

                “Fuckin’ hell, Cori, you _just_ won everyone over.” He was still inside of her goddamnit. Couldn’t go two hours without making shit complicated. Couldn’t just have a nice afternoon to celebrate the win. Always get-up-and-go with this gal, even if the place she was going was right into hell. Her cheek was plastered to his sternum. “You announce this to the gangs and you’ll lose them all over again. They’ll tar and feather you if you’re lucky, and skin you alive if you ain’t.”

                They had just brokered peace. Negotiations went about as good as she could expect, all things considered. Everyone had a little something to grumble about, but when she announced the new holdings to the gangs, people packed up and shipped out immediately. She’d been right. No one wanted all-out war now that there was space to stretch your legs, even if they had some gripes about where the chips fell. Not perfect, but there hadn’t been any fatalities yet, so he was starting to think they might be in the clear. People were just so ecstatic to get the hell out of Nukatown; the gangs scattered to get shop set-up as fast as humanly possible. Walls to fortify, turrets to calibrate, banners to fly. Better yet, because she’d offloaded so much territory in one go, everyone needed as many hands as they could get to secure their new spots as fast as humanly possible. Nukatown was abandoned—just them and the market vendors. No better time for a vacation in his book, but apparently “vacation” wasn’t a setting on Corrine’s brain.

                She propped her chin up and looked at him, eyes bright. The fact that he was arguing with her meant that she had already won, and they both knew it. She didn’t break eye-contact as she kissed his chest with a wiggle of her hips. He jolted and she had him.

                “That’s why we’re not telling the gangs.”

 

                That was how he ended up in the market with her late at night.

 

                Apparently, there’d been talk while he wasn’t looking, and he was pretty damn angry about that too. Seemed recent. She hadn’t been out of his sight much in the week since the negotiations went down, but even just a couple hours here and there was enough time for her to rope herself into a fucking rebellion.

                One of them nodded to her. The doctor, Mackenzie. The goodie-two-shoes settlers had figured out a way to deactivate the collars without detonating them, and when they’d told her, she’d decided it was about time to let them loose. Funny, the timing of it all. If Gage were a betting man, he’d wager that the traders had been sitting on this plan for a bit, biding their time for the right moment. With her success and the mass relocation, they’d probably seen opportunity. For a second, he wondered how she’d handled that conversation, but knowing her? She’d probably seen the risks and benefits and made up her mind in half a second. He would have liked to be a part of that decision, but no one would tell him exactly how it went down, and she wasn’t any more forthcoming now than she’d been lying in bed. They all seemed to trust her, though, which was interesting. He’d think about that more later.

                People scampered around him, collecting up food, supplies, and what few belongings they’d managed to keep for themselves. Stuffing backpacks, folding tarps for tents, lacing up boots.

                Overall, it wasn’t a bad idea. He wasn’t a fan of keeping captives around the park either—too much risk. People were at their most dangerous when cornered, and the traders in the market had nothing to lose, really. But having someone to lord-over kept the gangs happy, and, at the time, anything that kept the gangs happy kept him from a grizzly death, so he hadn’t given it a ton of thought. With territory to distract the raiders, he figured that the backlash wouldn’t be as bad as it could be. Still wasn’t without risk, but she was right whether he liked it or not. Without the collars, they’d be right fucked the second a fight broke out. The marketplace was full of wares, and some of those wares just so happened to be guns, ammo, and bombs. Frag grenades. Trip mines. All things raiders would happily buy, and all things that newly-freed slaves could absolutely use in an all-out war. And while the raiders were more used to fighting, Gage would never, ever discount someone desperate with nothing to lose. They’d tear the place apart from the inside out.

                So maybe her plan wasn’t _that_ bad. Still wasn’t great, though.

                When everyone was freed up, they piled the discarded collars up in the middle of the market. Cori talked them out of making a scene—leaving a taunting note or breaking shit on their way out. They wanted to stick it to the man, but she was saving their damn necks by not letting them gloat. These dumbass settler-types had no idea how far a raider would go to earn back his fucking pride. Shit, if they looked too cocky about leaving, Mason and Nisha would probably hunt some of them down personally, just to teach them a lesson. At least if they made it look like they left with their tails between their legs she could sell it like they were scared of the big bad Nukaworld gangs. Stroke everyone’s ego a bit to lessen the blow.

                They strolled right through the empty Nukatown USA, activated the elevator that led up to the station, and marched themselves into the waiting tram. The terminal was in the old office, through a locked door right off the first set of stairs headed down into the Gauntlet. They busted through the doors and hacked the terminal to make it look like they’d broken in. Then, the tram whisked them away, leaving only her and him holed up in an empty Nukatown.

                He shoulda been more angry that he wasn’t in on this plan from the start but all that melted away when he turned around and saw her. She looked so satisfied and they had the whole place to themselves. His mouth was on hers in seconds. She’d done it again. She pulled the back of his head and tugged him down, stretched up on her toes so that her lips brushed his ear. A huff of hot breath on his neck when he dug his thumbs into her hipbones. She radiated heat like a bonfire wrapped in sin.

                “We’ve got the run of the place tonight.” Her voice was breathy and low, and it sent shivers down his spine. Raised the hairs on the back of his neck. “Gauntlet or arena?”

                Fuck.

                He tangled his fingers in her hair, tipping her head back until she was looking up at him. Lips parted. Eyes sharp, focused. Throat exposed, hell, she even turned her jaw a bit like she was goading him to bite her. Crazy bitch.

                “That stunt? Never again.”

                “Won’t make any promises.” She grinned, pressing up against him in a way that was real distracting. He tried to keep his breathing under control, but she already knew she had him. She rolled her hips and he groaned, free hand grabbing a fistful of her ass. Her breath caught. She snaked a hand down between them, rocking her palm against him over his jeans while she watched him hold his breath. Those eyes did something to him every time. Fingers squeezed around him. He crushed her against his chest, pulling her hips up against his. She bit her lip.

                “Never. Again.”

                She didn’t make any promises, but they both knew she wasn’t gonna, and he was already beyond the point of caring. He dipped down and kissed her throat, letting his teeth skim her skin before biting down hard. She gasped his name and it was the sweetest thing he’d ever heard, and he was already forgetting to be mad at her for lying to him. They were on this fuckin’ roller coaster together—things were either real good or real bad, but he was already strapped in and along for the ride.

                Gauntlet _and_ arena. And then in the showers.


	23. Touch and Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She knew there was no way the loss of the Traders would go unnoticed.

                So. It kept happening. He kept being him and she kept being her and they kept being them, only now she didn’t even try to make an excuse when they fell into bed after a long day, because it wasn’t as if there was anyone for her to answer to, and she was not in the mood to think about all the ways in which this could be bad. Maybe if she kept ignoring her problems she could pretend they didn’t exist. Besides, her coworkers at the old law firm were always telling her she needed to find ways to unwind and sure, it took the actual literal apocalypse and life-threatening danger to take good advice, but she hadn’t had a stress headache in weeks.

                She brushed her thumb over Gage’s skin, just over his hipbones. His thigh was warm under her cheek and his chest rose and fell sharply every time she touched him, like he was being shocked.  She pressed her lips to his skin.

                This wasn’t exactly playing things smart. She was in enough danger, she didn’t need to complicate things by sleeping with her right-hand man.

                It was way, _way_ too late for that.

                When she wanted something, she took it. Not like she’d ever been good at dieting, or waiting patiently, or saving the good things for last. Nate had always scolded she had no willpower, but that wasn’t totally true. She had plenty of will power, it was just never directed towards self-control.

                When she was on the right track, his voice always got low and husky. Dangerously quiet, focused on her—intent. His good eye would follow her. His hands would land somewhere, usually around her hips or waist, a gentle pressure until he knew what she wanted. He almost always waited for her lead, like he was watching a dangerous animal and mimicking steps. Playing with fire, and yet he couldn’t seem to keep himself away. At least they were in the same boat there. She was learning all of his little tells—memorizing his expressions. None of this information had anything to do with the gangs or did her any practical good at all, but she knew it. And she knew him. Physically, for sure, and at least a little otherwise.

                In his sleep, he rolled over until he was half on top of her, his head cushioned on her stomach. It wasn’t the most comfortable, but it wasn’t half bad either. Corinne could feel Gage breathing, his weight a comforting pressure. She hadn’t quite realized it at first, but it was something about the casual physical intimacy. Touch. She just needed something to ground her, and hell if Gage wasn’t exactly that. Grounding. Concrete. He felt more real to her than anything else sometimes, and that was scary to think about when she gave that thought the time of day. The solution there, of course, was to give it the time of day. Like the old gag—go to a doctor and say “it hurts when I do this!” and the doctor will just say “then don’t do that.” So she didn’t do that. She didn’t think about it at all.

                Not even a little.

                Not like she had the time to worry about any of that anyways. The next morning brought with it a handful of tired, hungry raiders—parties from each gang regrouping at their respective bases to cart more supplies back to their new territories. The problem there was that, after stopping back at base, just about everybody headed to the market to buy rations and bullets. She didn’t have to wake up early and watch them to know how this would play out. Instead, she let herself sleep in, got dressed when she was good and ready, and took a stroll down to the market, fists clenched in anticipation of chaos.

                Like clockwork, her raiders were all already in the marketplace when she and Gage strut up, sun breaking over the wasteland like golden wax melting across the horizon. Bright blue sky—bluer than she remembered it being on her best days before the war, even. Light pouring down over the scrubby grass that poked up between cracked asphalt and the boarded-up old-world buildings as she passed through the gates and into the Market.

                Emissaries from the Disciples and Operators were already digging through the abandoned stalls, movements sharp and jerking with barely contained violence. The Pack wasn’t here yet. Never the “early to bed, early to rise” types, she supposed, but give it an hour and they’d probably be by. Corinne took a steadying breath. She’d predicted this—she’d known that there was no way they _wouldn’t_ notice—but it was one thing to think about the upset this would cause, and another to see a woman twice her size in full Disciples armor stick her foot through the flimsy plywood of the Doctor’s stall.

                Alright. Just wait. Let them work the rage out for a second.

                She and Gage went unnoticed for a shameful amount of time. Either that, or no one gave a shit about throwing a fit in front of the Boss. An Operator dug through the cashbox at the weapons stall, but it looked like Aaron Corbett had emptied all the caps into his ruck before setting out with the rest of the traders. That was bound to piss some people off, and she probably shouldn’t have let them walk with all the caps, but oh well. Too little too late on that one.

                The door to the market creaked open and a runt of a Disciple half-shoved passed her to report to another Disciple standing by the old central hub. She couldn’t hear everything that was said, but she did catch the word “tram.” So they’d figured to check the train. Smart.

                The second Disciple glanced up at the door to the market, but then spotted Corinne and Gage. Behind her heavy metal mask, eyes focused in, narrowing to slits. Recognition, like a thunder clap. It was Nisha. She shouldered past her underling and made a beeline for Corinne, but that was when the Pack finally caught up, throwing open the market doors with a fantastic BANG and stumbling through, still drunk after what must have been a pretty spectacular housewarming party. Nisha froze.

                The commotion drew the attention of the rest of the raiders in the market, and for a second, everyone stopped. Processing. That was when Mason emerged from the swarm of drunk Pack raiders and stood himself up to his full height. Corinne watched his eyes bounce from the chaos of overturned market stalls, to Nisha, and then finally, to herself.

                In the bright morning light, Mason looked ten feet tall. Like a fucking bear in a tanktop, jeans, and colorful make-up. It would have been funny if this didn’t have four-thousand ways to potentially go very wrong. He squared his shoulders and approached, just a little too close for comfort. Behind her, she heard Gage shift.

                “Looks like we weren’t the only ones who celebrated, _Boss._ ” Mason’s voice took on a gravely note, like he was chewing pavement. She could smell the vodka from where she was standing. “Did our little pets oversleep?”

                Corinne tipped her chin up and set her hands on her hips. Without a word, she let her gaze sweep the market. Raiders straightened up and stepped away from the broken stalls and overturned shelves they’d ben terrorizing, circling.

                This could go south in so many ways. There were how many scouts from each gang? At a glance, she’d say ten Disciples, fifteen Operators, and twenty Pack, plus Mason and Nisha. She’d be lucky if they killed her quick.

                Can’t give them a chance to think about their odds. If she let them realize the position they were in, she’d be finished. Corinne straightened her spine and walked forward, one foot in front of the other, passing Nisha and half the rabble before making it to the tented row of tables in the center. Wide stance. Raiders closed in around her, waiting.

                She looked over at Gage. He leaned back against the post holding up a tarp over the armory stall, ankles crossed in front of him. Cool as a cucumber and completely collected. It would be best for him to pretend he was calm, but she’d gotten to know him well enough to realize he wasn’t pretending. She could tell immediately if it was a façade just by looking at his hands. When he was worried, he looped his thumb into his belt so that he was closer to his handgun. Right now, his arms were folded over his chest.

                If he believed that she had this under control, she had to believe it too.

                Corinne cleared her throat and looked out over the crowd.


	24. Politicking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Politics are a balancing act, and while he's never seen her walk a tightrope, he's sure as hell watched her work a crowd, and that's close enough.

                “It appears the Traders have escaped Nuka World.”

                Chatter. A hum of arguing, snarling, and accusations. He’d told her this would be bad, but seeing just how bad it could get was something else. He pulled back the hammer on the gun tucked into his chest, hidden by his folded arms. A Disciple shoved forward, getting up next to Nisha and then leaning down to whisper something in her ear. Nisha glanced back over the crowd of raiders, but without being able to see her damn face, Gage couldn’t tell what she was looking for. Her eyes lighted on him and narrowed, before turning back. There was a knife in her right fist, just sitting there. Glinting in the morning sun. Gage had half a mind to cross the rabble and make his way to the Corinne, but if it looked like she needed a body guard, no one would take her seriously, now would they? Better not start a fight where there wasn’t one yet. Deep breath. He thunked his boot on the dirt. If it came to a shoot-out, they were dead anyways. Might as well try not to worry about that before he had to.

                Corinne raised her fist.  

                “And who in the hell let this happen?” Her voice remained steady, slipping into that clipped, curt tone that she’d used the last time she'd talked to the leaders. Her eyes roved the crowd like she was looking for someone specific. Like she could pin this on one of them. Like she knew something they didn’t. “Did the Pack post guards? Were there any Operators patrolling the perimeter of the park? Nisha, did you send anyone to keep an eye on the hold?”

                A hush fell over the crowd. It was a risk, calling out Nisha like that. One by one, though, heads turned to the woman in question, eyes searching, waiting for Nisha’s retort. Dead fuckin’ quiet. Eerie. Nisha didn’t say a word.

                “If you don’t take care of your toys,” Corinne hummed, her voice low. “You’ll lose them.”

                “Why didn’t _you_ keep an eye on them,” Nisha hissed. “ _Boss_?”

                Nisha was smiling with all of her teeth bared like a pissed-off coyote. Gage could feel the metal of the gun tucked into his chest, and his worst-case scenario was starting to feel more like a “when” than an “if.” Corinne looked Nisha dead in the eye without blinking or flinching and waited a whole eternity before responding, letting the tension in the air stretch to a breaking point before finally speaking.

                “Does it look like it’s my job to babysit you, Nisha?” Deathly quiet. Deadpan. Didn’t even blink. Both women were surrounded on all sides by grimy raiders, but they may as well have been alone in the park for how intensely they were staring at each other. Like there was no one but the two of them in a good old-fashioned stand-off smack in the middle of some ghost town.

                A ripple shivered through the crowd. No one said anything, but heads swiveled to see what Nisha would do. Fists clenched. Body coiled tight like a spring. A fine, simmering rage, so obvious he could see it all the way over by the mangled stalls. There were so many ways the chips could fall here, but Gage knew that look in Cori’s eye. Something had her thinking that she had the upper hand, and while he didn’t know what made her so confident, he was starting to trust her judgement with these kinds of things.

                “No, Overboss.” Nisha finally grated out. “Of course not.”

                Corinne grinned at her, lips pressed in a tight line, arms folded over her chest. She nodded—not rubbing it in or taunting, but affirming. She was in charge here, not Nisha. Even Coulter hadn’t ever brought Nisha to heel like that. This was either very good, or very bad and there was no way of being sure about which it was yet, but he’d take little victories when they could fuckin’ get them.

                “Am I your mother?” Corinne’s eyebrow quirked up at the corner, lips pressed in a hard line. “Do you expect me to waste my precious time running around, cleaning up after you?”

                “No, Overboss.” The words were barely audible through Nisha’s grit teeth.

                A couple of murmurs ran through the assembled, but Corinne didn’t pay them any mind. She waited for a break in chatter and raised her fist again. This time, they quieted right the fuck down. Immediate, like she’d fired a shot from her gun.

                “You all let them go, and if the traders had any damn sense in their heads, they’d be miles and miles away from the Nuka World gangs.” Corinne didn’t have to stand on a table this time; all eyes were on her. Hook, line, and sinker, and once again Gage was struck dumb by her ability to talk people in circles to lead them to where she needed them. Like fuckin’ magic. Her gaze swept the crowd as she added “hell, maybe letting them spread the word about how dangerous we are will bring in more hero-types for you all to tear apart. In the meantime, however, we’ve got some changes to make.”

                More muttering. Some shifting. But still, when she started talking again, it was all eyes on her.

                “We want a functioning market, right? Well, then we’ll have to build one.” She turned around, back to the assembled as she looked out over the far wall of the market. It was a power move, turning her back on a mob of raiders, but even as she turned back around, pivoting on her heel, no one so much as twitched.

                “I want two members from every gang as representatives. We’ll need an armory, a weapons dealer, someone for gear and supplies, someone for food, and I want two medics from two different gangs. After that, we’ll establish raiding parties to bring in goods. I want eight members from each gang in these squads, are we clear?”

                Low rumble, but he couldn’t tell if they were agreeing or griping. Corinne leaned back against one of the tall shelves under that center tarp. The longer her eyes lingered on the crowd, the quieter everyone got. She waited. The murmurs died out.

                “You’ll sort this shit out yourselves, I’d imagine. Right?”

                Another rumble, a little louder this time. Definitely agreeing.

                “I want a report tomorrow night on who is going where. New merchants are to report to my office at Fizztop by sundown. After that, I want four raid squads of six people each, and I want to see your faces after I meet with the merchants.”

                She looked out at the crowds and smiled beatifically, dimples and freckles and all. With a downright sweet nod, she added “now get the fuck out of my sight.”

                If he wasn’t a little bit afraid of her, he’d be turned on. Hell, who was he kidding? It was almost better he was a little afraid of her.

                The second she released them, people scrambled. Mason shot her a sour look before turning away with the mob from the Pack. A team of Operators headed out the front gates, probably off to tell Mags about what had happened. Nisha stopped dead and stared for a moment, unblinking, before summoning one of her people with a jerk of her head. After a very long moment, Nisha grinned, showcasing her row of jagged broken-glass teeth.

                “Nice to see you stepping up, Overboss.” With that, Nisha turned her back to the Boss and marched in the opposite direction. The woman was an animal, though. More than even the Pack was, if he was being honest about it. And a predator like Nisha? Never turns their back on an enemy they fear. Either Nisha thought of Corinne as more prey than predator, or Nisha was playing things a lot cooler than he ever would have thought she’d be able. Either way, it didn’t bode well. He shelved that thought for now, though.

                Knowing the gang leaders the way he did, Gage was real interested to see who they each shoved forward to make up the new market team. Guess he’d have to wait to see if Corinne’s speech had worked.

                They marched back to Fizztop in silence and were given a wide berth from point “A” to point “B.” Not a soul stepping up to test her. He let her lead the way, following behind her with his arms loose at his sides like he didn’t have a care in the world. She walked with a sort of brisk, determined pace. Places to go, people to see, shit to do. It was perfect—couldn’t have planned it out better himself. She _looked_ like she was Overboss of the fucking raiders, moved like it. The drugged-up blonde who’d stepped out of the arena and puked in the grass had been swallowed up by whoever the hell she was now.

                It was the discipline. The order. Coulter had left them to chaos and it made them weak. What raiders needed was a strong hand and a tough front. They needed direction and purpose, and Corinne was more than happy to bark at them and keep them busy. If she gave them enough to do, they wouldn’t have the time or the braincells to put towards questioning her, not when she had them called to heel like she did. The set-up wasn’t perfect, but it was working, and that was all he needed right now.

                When they finally made it back to her place, the steel slipped out of her spine and she slumped against the bar, her head in her hands. Her hair spilled over her face, waves of honey-gold brushing the counter.

                “Good show out there, Boss.”

                “Nisha’s going to be trouble, isn’t she?” She didn’t lift her head. Her voice was low and solemn, like she’d just lost a fight. Deep inhale, and her shoulders rose and fell.

                “Hell yeah she is, but she’s trouble for another day right now.” He leaned beside her, tracing the tension in her shoulders with his eyes. When he nudged her with his shoulder, she glanced up. “For now, we have a working alliance. Didn’t think you’d manage it, but here we are.”

                “Your confidence in me is astounding,” she crooned sardonically.

                “I don’t believe in much, Princess, so in my book? You’ve exceeded expectations.”

                Delicate fingers with chipped nails tucked hair back from her face, securing it behind one ear. She looked up at him for a second, eyes trained on his. For a minute, he was so flustered he couldn’t figure out which way was up. Like they were floating under water. Then she broke the spell, looking down at her hands clasped on the counter. Right. He walked to the makeshift living room across from her bed and dropped into the plush chair hiding behind a banged-up coffee table. She watched him, but not so intense this time. Out the corner of her eye.

                “I’ll take that as a compliment.” Her shoulders sagged.

                “Do whatever you want with it,” he grumbled.

                She straightened out and headed over to the fridge in the corner, which they had finally gotten some Operator tinker to fix. Cori bent at the waist, retrieved a couple of beers, and nudged the door shut with her hip. When she walked back over, she plopped down onto his lap without saying a word, popping the metal bottlecaps off their beers on the edge of the table. She shifted to get comfortable and he found he was suddenly real interested in the label on his Gwinnett stout. With one arm trapped against the armrest behind her back, the only place to rest the other was across her knees. Corinne eased against him at the touch, kicking back a sip of her beer. Not like he wouldn’t be interested in a rest and a drink after all the stress down at the Market, but now wasn’t the time to be getting sloppy. Something about her made him forget to keep his shit together on days like this, and he had to remind himself to stay focused. Eye on the prize.

                “Not smart to celebrate before we know for sure whether or not the gangs followed your orders.” He leaned forward to set his beer on the table, reaching across her. She didn’t seem to mind the invasion of personal space one bit. Her head tipped back, letting the sunlight trace the dull point of her chin as it sloped down into her throat. Each breath tugged at her ribs, in and out as she stared into blank space. On second thought, he’d take that beer now. He reached forward and grabbed it, taking a swig.

                “They’ll do as they were told.” She was still upside-down, gazing out one of the massive, dirty windows.

                “You’re so sure of that, huh?”

                “I am.” Her head snapped up with a speed that made him dizzy. She shot him a look, eyes wide and lips quirked up at the corner. Sharp and perceptive. Sent a little bit of a chill down his spine like she could see right through him.

                She was right. He wasn’t sure how he knew it, but she was right and they would come. Something in the pit of his gut was sure of it, and that was almost worse.

                “What makes you so sure?” He asked more out of curiosity than anything, but she snorted.

                “Because I’ve got them fooled,” she said, lips puckered up to the beer bottle. “Because they think I’m stronger than they are.”


	25. Fresh Air

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cori is holding together so well until she isn't.

                Things were…stable. Not perfect and not peaceful, but stable.

                The new shopkeeps had shown up just like she’d predicted, scruffy and slightly irritated at being handed menial work, but falling in-line nevertheless. What had she expected? Freshly washed faces and ramrod spines? She wasn’t their mother; this would have to do.

                From the Pack, she had Deathclaw (who was not even close to named appropriately for how he looked) and Maria—a weapons dealer and an armorer respectively. As expected. From the Operators, she had Vince the medic and Hal, who she assigned to food supply. From the Disciples, she ended up with her second medic and her general trader, two women who looked exactly the same in their masks and went by Whisper and Alice. Not a bad shake. She assigned them their roles and everyone seemed to take things pretty much in stride. All they’d have to do is restore the Market back to rights after everyone’s little tantrum and then they could set up shop right where the traders had been, no hassle. Some grousing here and there, but what else were they supposed to do? Tell their respective gangs they didn’t want to do it? They’d be gutted in an instant. So she had her new market staffed and ready to go in a day. Not bad.

                The scouting parties were next. It looks like Mason had picked all weak links for his eight people. Scrawny kids mostly. She even recognized the little shit she’d shot in the foot ages ago. He refused to look her in the eye and walked with a noticeable limp, but didn’t say a cross word. Nisha had gone the opposite route and picked some particularly vicious Disciples to make up her eight people. Loose cannons, from what Cori could see; people who Nisha didn’t trust to keep their heads around base. Her team was practically frothing at the mouth. Mags’ logic was trickier. Cori couldn’t spot many commonalities right out the gate—none of the Operators seemed especially tough or weak, or had any special skills she could discern. While Cori would love to know more about Mags’ selection process, time was ticking, so she broke the squads up quickly, trying to shake them out as evenly as possible. Two people from each gang per squad. Looked about right when she took a step back, but she had the gut-deep understanding that Irene from the Disciples was going to kill Mason’s runt of a scout within a month at the most. She’d make it look like an accident, but she was already eying the kid like a piece of meat through the slit in her mask. One of the Operators smirked at a Disciple when she stood beside her on their new squad, but Cori couldn’t tell if they were going to kill each other or kiss each other, so time would only tell on that one. Her other two squads seemed mostly disinterested in one another, but again, only time would tell.

                For now, this had to be it.

                Gage watched from her desk as she assigned groups and gave them all directions in which to scatter. Team A would roam up by Grandchester to see if there was anything further North they could use. Team B was her safety, headed for the heart of the Commonwealth. If they came back empty handed, it would be clear they weren’t trying. Team C was to head out for the Northern ‘Wealth, and team D for the south. They’d set out in the morning. As incentive to cooperate, she gave them free reign to pick out some supplies from what the traders had left behind. There wasn’t a lot left, but the promise of frag grenades could motivate a raider like nothing else, it seemed. Whatever worked.

                They filed out and it was just her and Gage again, back to their little vacation after all that leg-work. Corinne stretched out on her bed, fully dressed just past sunset, because hell, there just wasn’t anything else that desperately needed doing and she didn’t have a deadline hanging over her head for the first time since waking up into this world. Her eyes slid shut and she was out, drifting in perfect, unbroken, dreamless sleep.

                She slept through the rest of the evening and awoke, dazed and with a pounding headache. Not quite late enough to go to bed, judging by the clock on her Pip, but later than she’d expected. Gage was sitting in the chair by the window. It was nice—quiet and serene, almost. A cozy evening after a tough day at work. Cori wrapped herself in one of the thin blankets off her bed and stepped down to the lounge area she’d set up, dropping onto the loveseat across from Gage. He didn’t even look up, reassembling his shotgun with practiced hands. Just an evening in. She still had three quarters of her _Live and Love_ magazine to dig through, and then a whole issue of _Astounding Awesome Tales_ that wasn’t even missing pages.

                She was halfway through a story about a lonely housewife and a dashing VaultTech rep (that was at least partially paid content, for sure) when the bottle hit the window. Didn’t break the window. The bottle shattered with a crash and rained shards glass down onto the ground below, but it wasn’t the bottle that bothered her, so much as it was the fire. Molotov cocktail. Someone had just launched a Molotov cocktail at her window, right over Gage’s head.

                She was on her feet before she thought it all the way through.

                Gage was smarter. In one smooth motion, he lurched up from his seat, snubbed his cigarette on the table, and shoved her to the floor.

                “Molotov!” Her brain wasn’t working right. Still sleep-muddled—not processing.

                “Shut up.”

                “How—”

                “I said _shut up,_ Boss.”

                She looked up at Gage, propped up on her elbows on the floor, with him on his hands and knees over her, head turned towards the lift.  Perfectly still. Waiting.

                One heartbeat.

                Two.

                Spry as a cat, he rolled off her and crouched, reaching for the shotgun he’d left leaning against his chair. When she opened her mouth to ask what he was doing, he raised a finger to his lips, loaded the gun, and pulled back the bolt. Still crouched, he made his way over to the door, rising only once his back was against the solid wall. He ducked around the doorframe, looked down, aimed his gun, and fired into the night. 

                The bang jolted her. Heart pounding. Oh. _Oh._ Were they under attack? Was someone going to murder her for the stunt she’d pulled in the market? Was it Mason? Nisha? Dizzy. The world tipped sideways before righting itself.

                Move. _Move._

                She rolled and scrambled back towards the platform behind her, crawling up the three steps to huddle beside her bed.

_Bang._

                Hands shaking, she reached for the pistol under her mattress.

_Bang._

                Was Gage still shooting? He must be, she figured, watching him from the floor. Her fingers tightened around the gun. She flicked off the safety and clutched it tight to her chest. After a long moment, Gage finally righted himself, his eyes bouncing around the room before landing on her, huddled up in front of her dresser. Distantly, she realized that she was shaking.

                “Boss? Boss, it’s alright.” He set the gun back down by the chair and stepped forward slowly, hands out like he was approaching a rabid animal. “Damnit, you’re fine. Get up.”

                She couldn’t force her body to cooperate, hands locked up, knees pulled up to her chest. It wasn’t like this was the first time she’d been shot at. Far from it, at this point. But her body still wasn’t responding.

                Gage stepped forward, one foot after the other. Careful, which was both flattering and insulting, when she thought about it. He got close enough to disarm her and dropped down into a crouch, reaching out nice and slow. Very carefully, he wrapped one hand around hers and maneuvered the weapon from her grasp, flipping the safety back on and setting it on the floor beside them.

                “Boss? Corinne?” His tone was softer this time—low and grumbling, but gentle. Gage set his hands on her shoulders. “It’s alright. Just some dumbass punks.”

                “Alright?” Her voice sounded ridiculous and outside of herself, like she was listening to a recording of a twelve-year-old.

                “Drunk assholes looking to stir up shit. Nothin’ but.”

                “You shot them.”

                The look on Gage’s face was priceless, and any other time, she would have laughed. His brows furrowed, lips pressed together tight but twitching.

                “Shoot ‘em? Hell no—I just scared them off. D’you—” He huffed. “Do you think I’d hit fuckin’ anything from this distance with a damned shotgun?”

                Oh. Well. There was that.

                “Just scattering ‘em. It’s alright.”

                Corinne nodded, heat coming back to her slowly like she was thawing from frozen. She mumbled “yeah, yeah,” and shook off his touch. Of course she was all cool confidence handling the gangs, but one little Molotov and she’s hitting the deck, tripping over her jangled nerves. Overboss can’t handle a stupid prank. She sucked in another breath and squashed that thought down as far as it would go; she pictured crushing it under the heel of her boot. Done with that now. No time for flinching.

                “Maybe we should get out of here for a few days,” she muttered. “Give everything time to settle.”

                Gage shrugged, stretching out a hand to haul her to her feet. She let him pull her, gripping his hand tight. Maybe he could feel her hand shaking. Maybe he was just being patient with her. Either way, he didn’t pull back until she finally let go after a solid minute of just standing there.

                “Right?” She looked up at him, but he just shrugged again. Helpful.

                “It’ll be fine, Boss.”

                “Nothing like a breath of fresh air.”

                “Whatever you say.”

                “Can’t hurt, right?”

                He stared for a moment. Then, slowly, nodded.

                “Sure. Couldn’t hurt.”

                “Alright, then.” Corinne dropped herself onto her bed and ran her hands down her thighs, kneading the denim of her jeans. “We’ll set out at dawn. Better get some shut-eye. Night, Gage!”

                Gage watched her tuck herself into bed, scratched his head, and then crossed back towards the window to turn out the light. Backlit by a star-studded sky and the faint glow of the neons below, she watched as Gage settled down onto the chair across from her bed, feet kicked up on the table. Standing watch. All that sanguine ease— _just a prank, Boss—_ but he stuck around to keep watch throughout the night.

                Yes. Some fresh air would do them both good right about now.


	26. Dress-up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, Gage just doesn't know what to make of Corinne.

                He grabbed her around the waist and jerked her back from the edge, right before she slipped and fell and probably broke her goddamned neck. Her boots skidded against the jagged wood where the floor gave out before finding purchase so she could right herself.

                Ferals everywhere. Just fucking everywhere—in the streets, around corners, crawling up out of piles of old-world junk. Everywhere. They had gunned their way through the worst of it to see if they could make something out of Bradburton, but right as they’d thought they were clear, boom. More ferals in the house, lurching out from under tables. Wrinkled old fucker chased her up the stairs while he reloaded. Damn near gave him a fuckin’ heart-attack, and almost ran Cori right off the edge of the floor, where a huge section of wall had been blown out and destroyed by either the bombs or a radstorm. She would have fallen from the second floor onto the paved road outside, and who knows, maybe she would have landed on yet another goddamned feral. At least the ghoul fell and she didn’t. One less to worry about.

                Corinne stood up straight, adjusted her shirt, and looked around the second floor. Used to be a bedroom, from what he could tell. Walls were pretty okay until they hit the spot that had been leveled. No roof, though, and that would be a problem. All-in-all, Bradburton wasn’t the worst, but it would take up a lot of resources to repair, and their scav teams were small and untested. He looked over at Corinne.

                “Thoughts?” She asked.

                “Right now?” He looked out over the broken town. “Not worth the investment.”

                “Agreed. I wish we’d figured that out before getting all the way out here.” She slid the drawer of an old dresser open, rooted through half-heartedly, but didn’t find much of use. Mostly just useless junk. He kicked over a pile of rubble in the corner, but nothing much of value there either. A busted old watch on the nighstand. Some charred books on a shelf.

                She gasped from across the room and he had his shotgun up and aimed before realizing that it wasn’t another feral. Excited gasp. Found something. Her face lit up as she pulled a dress out of one of the standing closets, her fists clutching the fabric for dear life. Bright blue, belted, with little white dots all over it. One second, she was digging around for useful salvage, the next she was half out of her jeans, all of her shit sitting on the floor in a circle around her.

                “Boss, what are you—?”

                “It’s in my size! I usually can’t find things in my size! Too big in the shoulders, or too small in the hip. Hold on!” She wriggled out of her shirt and then, when she was down to her underwear, snatched the dress off the dresser and shimmied it up her body. Took her a second to get her arms through the straps, and then to get the dress to sit right on her. She glanced back at him over her shoulder, hands on her hips. Looked real good like that—like a pin-up.

                “Zip me?”

                Damnit, Cori. He came up behind her and found the little white zipper sitting on her lower back. Gage eased it up slowly, the metal teeth coming together one by one until it was secured across her shoulder blades, slung low. She fidgeted with the belt around the waist, and then cinched it down before turning. The neckline arched over her chest like a heart, the dress nipping down into the white belt and then flaring back out to show off her calves. She gave a dainty little twirl and blew him an exaggerated kiss. Right out of a spank magazine, if you didn’t look at her muddy boots.

                He wanted to poke fun. Ain’t no way she’d tromp around Nukaworld in a dress. Some folks from the Operators wore skirts, but their clothes were armored, and there was no way this little cotton thing was lead-lined. Impractical as hell. But she beamed up at him, and with her bowed lips and bright eyes, she looked so damn good he couldn’t say a word. Looked right, like this. Like she secretly belonged in an old-world magazine, and was just hanging around here for the fun of it. It was real easy to picture her all dolled up like one of them, hair pulled back, lips red, wearing heels and walking around with a dainty umbrella or sipping a cocktail from a fancy glass or something. He swallowed.

                “What do you think?” She pulled the dress out and twirled again, for show.

                “Ain’t gonna stop a bullet,” he grumbled.  

                He’d never seen her smile like that. She laughed, all gracious and bright, and for a second, she looked like someone else. Different. Someone who had never had to fight for her life; someone who had never held a gun or led a gang or walked the wasteland. A little blonde stranger. He didn’t know how to think about her like this. This gal was a flashbang—stunned him and now he was floundering to figure out which way was up. He gathered up her discarded clothes and grabbed for her pack, not sure what else to do with himself. When he turned back around, she had pulled her hair out of the braid she’d woven that morning, fingers brushing through until her face was framed by a cloud of soft, wavy gold.

                Something ached. The palms of his hands or the pit of his gut. Couldn’t tell where it came from, but it seized his chest and for a whole minute he just stood there, while she shook out her hair and brushed ancient dust off her skirt. His throat was tight.

                Nonsense. He was thinking nonsense. Gage cleared his throat and hitched her pack up higher on his shoulder.

                “Boss, we should probably get walking if you want to make it back to Nukatown before dark.”

                “It isn’t that far away,” she muttered, turning this way and that in the half-shattered mirror over the dresser.  

                “Yeah, well.” He rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly a little warm.

                “We can wait a minute. Besides, I need a break from all the walking.” She grabbed her ruck back and fished through it for a second, pulling out their lunchbox. “Let’s have a picnic!”

                “Here?”

                “No, I was thinking out by the church. In the sun.” She jammed her spare clothes into her bag and zipped it back shut, lunchbox in hand. She was already halfway down the stairs by the time she finished talking, and he had to hightail it carrying both packs to keep up. Once Cori decided she wanted something, she’d have it, and there was no way he’d let her jaunt ahead with no armor to get torn to pieces by ferals. They walked back through the main street and up to the church. They’d cleared out most of the ghouls on their way in, but a few still managed to crop up as they walked. He put them down without so much as blinking. Cori didn’t even flinch—all single-minded focus now that she had a goal.

                When they made it to the churchyard, she found a place with some scrubby grass, laid out their unzipped sleeping bag, and sat down. Legs curled beside her, knees ruddy under the blue hem of her skirt, which fanned out around her. Dirt on her cheeks and a forming bruise on her ankle where one had grabbed her, but she was pretty as a picture. She still had the lunchbox, and dug through it to hand him some canned fruit and a spoon. She took the other can, and then cracked into a Nukacola. He hated cola—drank enough of it around Nukaworld—but even the flat, sickly sweet soda tasted better sitting next to her under the sun. She brushed her hair over one shoulder and sighed.

                He had this wild fantasy of her. She’d be soft and she’d taste like the syrupy fruit. Peaches or some shit. Sun-warmed. He’d slide his hands up her thighs under her dress and shift his weight to pin her to the sleeping bag beneath them. She’d make some of those soft little noise, arms coming up around his neck, pulling him in closer. He’d stroke his thumb over the skin of her hip. She’d hook one leg over his. He’d kiss her throat. She’d arc up against him. He’d—

                “Thinking about something?” Her voice shook him out of it. When he looked over, she was smirking like she could read his mind.

                “Nothin’, Boss.”

                She nodded, and then, after a second, laid back with one arm behind her head, the other resting over her ribcage, eyes closed. _Ah hell._ He wondered if she’d grabbed those old stockings they’d seen in one of the shops around town. Thigh-high, with the seam that ran down her calves like in the magazines. Probably tore easy, but he could be real gentle peeling them off her once he got a good look. Or he could be real _not_ gentle. Whichever. She shifted, crooking one knee, and the dress slid up to her mid-thigh, fabric skimming up her skin. Now, he was sweating.

                He rubbed the back of his neck and looked out over the wasteland. He couldn’t quite see Nuka Town from here, but it wasn’t too far. It would take them the better part of the day to get back to base, but it shouldn’t be a bad walk with the light, the flat stretch of land, and the cloudless sky.  A lot of Gunners had packed up and moved out since they’d taken the parks back, and they had plenty of allies along the way if shit hit the fan. Perks that came with being at the top of the foodchain: they had time to sit around a little longer. Besides, she’d wanted to get out for a bit. Probably not smart to leave town for more than a couple of days right now, but they’d left two mornings ago, so he wasn’t too worried just yet. He stretched out beside her and closed his eyes, just for a second.

                When he opened them again, it was getting dark. He’d been having a real nice dream, full of blue dresses and long legs, and was shocked to wake-up to a sunset. Cori was fast asleep too, laying on her side next to him, hair fanned out around her head. They shouldn’t have fallen asleep like that. There were ferals around here, for fuck’s sake, and who knows if they’d cleared all of them or not. He jolted up real fast at the thought, but there was nothing around as far as he could see. He breathed a sigh of relief and looked back down at Cori.

                Deep sleeper. Went out like a light and stayed out. He probably could have shot a feral right next to her and she wouldn’t wake up. Her cheek was resting on her arm, and the dress had slipped up to her hip. Still looked real good. He did her a favor and tugged the dress back down to where it belonged, as if someone would walk by and see. Dumb as hell. He probably should have just woken her up.

                In the hazy dusk, he stood himself up and looked back at the church. Not enough time to make it back to Nukatown before nightfall, and he didn’t want to chance some critter biting his fuckin’ dick off because he couldn’t see where he was going. Looks like they’d be camping again. The roof seemed to be in one piece, from where he was standing. Of all the buildings in town, it seemed to be the most salvageable; they’d both agreed on that when they’d landed here earlier that day.

                Keeping her in the corner of his eye, he wandered to the front doors, which swung open to reveal an empty room. They’d be smart to really look around to make sure it was actually as empty as it seemed, but it wouldn’t be a bad place to hole up, all things considered. The windows were high and thick, so breaking into them would be too much work for any ferals around. There only seemed to be one door, which they could barricade easily enough. The heavy wooden table at the other end could be overturned for cover. He went back to grab their stuff first and drop it inside the doors. Now would be a good time to wake her. Make her help him set up camp like she oughta. But, standing over her sleeping form, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He scooped Cori up, sleeping bag and all. She barely even twitched in her sleep, so when he got inside, he carried her to one of the long benches and set her down there for now. She slept right through.

                Golden light filtered in through the windows as the sun set. He grabbed for their lantern and did a quick sweep, but the place was pretty small. There was one back room with a desk, some chairs, and an empty closet filled with old clothes. Looked like everything had been picked over well before they’d shown up. He dumped the clothes onto the floor to make them a spot to sleep, and then moved all their crap into the back room. She didn’t even wake up as Gage pushed benches in front of the doors to block them off and planted proximity mines around the entrance.

                Time for bed. If they woke up early enough, they could make it back to Fizztop by noon or so and take stock of where everyone was at. Maybe even meet with the gang leaders. Gage turned back to grab Cori, but when he went back over to where he’d set her, he froze.

                Corinne was still lying curled on her side on one of the wooden pews, her hair splayed out all around her, arms dangling off the seat. With the light coming down through the stained glass above, though, she was painted in vibrant light—blues and purples and greens. He couldn’t find the right words, but it was richer than that, like she was bathing in gemstones. Colors eked down from the crown of her head to her bare arms, to the dress, washing her in light that bled all the way to the curves of her calves. Like she was made of stained glass herself. Unburdened. Easy smiles and soft laughter and all this light, as she slept soundly, untouched by the world around them. He’d never seen anything so fucking beautiful in his life. Beautiful wasn’t a word he got to use. Beautiful wasn’t a word that even felt comfortable to _think._ And then, the sun slipped further down the horizon, and the light slid right off of her and left him staring at her sleeping form in an empty room in the dark. How long had he stood there like that?

                She was still dead to the world when he picked her up again to move her to the back room.

                He set the lantern on the desk (she’d panic if she woke up and couldn’t see) and laid down beside her. Place was rigged—the door was barred, he’d set out the mines so they’d hear anything coming from a mile away, and he was a damn light sleeper anyways. About as safe as they could get, and she was warm and curled up against his chest the second he settled in. Gage didn’t usually let himself sleep much on the road, and if he did, he sure as hell made sure she’d be awake to keep an eye out. But hidden in the back room of this old, run-down place with her? Maybe he could make an exception. He tucked his hands under the back of his skull and dozed.

                When he woke up early in the morning, she was still asleep and wrapped around him in every way. Head on his chest, arm around his waist, leg was hitched up over his and her knee was hooked so that he couldn’t move without moving her too. That knee was a little too high up for comfort. He shifted. And shit. The dress. He’d almost forgotten she was wearing it, but the sight of her in that damn blue dress sure was a little too nice. All rumpled and hitched up like they’d done something indecent last night. He really _wished_ they’d done something indecent last night.

                Light came in through the windows, and the little clock on her Pip said it was about six in the morning. He tucked the corners of the sleeping bag around her shoulders and wormed his way out from under her. A quick check of the place showed that the church was still empty, just like he’d left it. He dug through their pack and snacked on some jerky, letting her sleep a little longer. The clock on her Pip struck eight before she so much as twitched.

                “Mmph.” She groaned, rolling onto her back. “Gage?”

                “Yup.”

                She blinked up at him. Her eyes bounced around the room before landing on him, sitting down across from her beside his ruck. She smiled, still bleary-eyed.

                “We’re not outside?”

                “You fell asleep on the lawn.” Well, _they_ fell asleep on the lawn, but he didn’t feel like saying that. “I took us inside for the night.”

                She stretched her arms over her head, arching up off the floor. His ears were hot. He rubbed the back of his neck and looked away, because that dress was all kinds of mussed, and wasn’t really covering much at this point. If he had to look at her all stretched out like that, tits pushed up to her chin and skirt slipped up to her waist, he’d lose his damn mind.

                “Mmm. Thanks, Gage.” She flopped back down onto their makeshift bed.

                After a second, she got up onto her knees and then her feet, yawning wide. She grabbed for her pack over by the desk and pulled out her traveling clothes, setting them on the floor before standing back up and reaching for the zipper on her dress.

                “Unzip me?”

                Gage was in a very special kind of hell. He slid the zipper back down and she shimmied out of the dress without a word, bending down in front of him to grab her jeans. His fingers tingled. He could grab her by the hips right here, right now. Fingers pressing into her skin. All alone in this old church, just the two of them. Him and this sweet little stranger who looked suspiciously like the Boss.

                Before he knew it, she was back in jeans and a flannel again, sipping water from her canteen. And she was her again. Cori. Guns and grit and stubbornness. Something about that made him feel a flush of relief and a twinge of regret at the same time, and in that moment, he decided that he didn’t want to put a whole lot of thought towards why. The dress was sitting on the floor on the heap of clothes. He scooped it up. The fabric was soft, warm from her skin.

                “You, uh. You gonna keep this?”

                The grin she shot him back was a promise and a threat all wrapped up in one. She took the dress from his hands and tucked it into her bag, next to the lunchbox.


	27. Home Sweet Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corinne is back on her throne, and she isn't scared, damnit.

                Nothing like a little time away to make everything seem just a smidge less terrifying. So some idiot had launched a Molotov at her window? Big deal. She was still kicking and a tiny little outburst like that one wouldn’t stop her—no way, no how. Corinne Lucille Hart was the fucking Overboss.

                She and Gage made it back to Nukatown around midday. It was a clear, sunny afternoon, the place was a mess, and there were at least three drunken Disciples piled on top of one of those old paddleboats in the shallow pond. Alright. When the Boss is away and all that, she supposed. If they drink themselves into a stupor, they can’t stab her in the gut until she’s Swiss cheese, so they could indulge as much as they like, so far as she was concerned. Besides, she wasn’t the one who was going to have to tip them out of their float and get them functional again. Her favorite kind of problems were the ones that belonged to someone else.

                They made it back up to Fizztop, emptied their rucks, and regrouped. Corinne took a shower and changed clothes. Gage reloaded their guns and cleaned them on the bartop between bites of canned beans. They didn’t really need the tune-up after so short a jaunt, but she had her ways of regrouping, and he had his, she supposed. By the time she was toweling her hair dry, looping her holster onto her belt, and lacing up her boots, he was just about done. She snuck a bite from his breakfast and chased it with some of the bottled water she’d squirreled away in the kitchen.

                “You set to take a walk?” He grumbled.

                Corinne looked down from the tall window by the sitting area and watched Disciples go about their business below, trading jibes, leering at the rookies who had drifted out into the middle of the pond. Now was as good a time as ever.

                “Sure.”

                “I’m thinking,” he started, glancing up from the bar. “We should make sure those jackasses did as they were told.”

                “I was thinking the same thing.”

                Gage stood up and secured his gun in its holster. He handed hers over as he passed her on his way to the lift, and it was warm from his hands, cleaned and loaded and glinting sinisterly in the sun. As she looked it over, he muttered “hold on” and knelt down in front of her. Before either of them gave it a thought, his fingers worked against her thigh, securing the buckle at the bottom of her holster around her leg with practiced ease.

                Oh.

                She must have forgotten to cinch it down when she was getting dressed. He tugged the belt tight and then rose, brushing his hands on his jeans. It caught up with him then. Not an overstep, but also…Well. Since when did he dress her anyways? He dusted his hands on his pants again, a little harder this time like he was trying to slap the feeling out of them.

                “Ah, sorry, Boss. Just noticed.”

                “It’s fine.” Blood pooled under her cheeks even as she said it, but Gage was polite enough to pretend he didn’t notice.

                They stood very much apart from each other on the lift ride down to the park. That was ridiculous. Part of her brain registered it; that was ridiculous. They had slept together for chrissake, and not just once. Not like he’d never touched her thigh, and she was clothed to boot. There was nothing to it. And yet. Still. Something about the easy familiarity sat wrong in here gut, like she’d set her keys in the wrong place and found them two feet to the left of where she always put them. She oughta shake that. It meant nothing—just that he was helping keep her alive by making sure she was suited up and ready to go. Gage had a vested stake in her survival. But it was familiar, and it clicked after a second.

                Nathan. Nate used to help her in the mornings; he’d zip her skirt or spot runs in her stockings or clasp a necklace around her throat. It was one of his little gestures during the good times, when they weren’t at each other’s throats or sitting-out an icy silence. That was the problem. No matter where she went, Nathan Kowalski followed.

                No. Not here. Not now.

                Corinne pushed that thought as far back in her head as she could, imagined herself a big metal lockbox, and crammed it down inside. Done with that.

                The lift touched grass and Cori stepped out, ready for the day.

                Everything was quiet around Disciple turf. There weren’t many of them left to hang around NukaTown after Nisha had taken the bulk of their forces out to settle her territories. The ones who stayed were worse for wear, drunk, surly, and quiet. Two of them leaned against the wall they’d built around their nest, glaring as she and Gage passed. Tensed like predators about to pounce. Bitter, if she guessed it right. Real bitter that they’d been left behind to hold down the fort. One spit at the ground as she sidestepped a pool of vomit. She made a mental note that Disciples didn’t do well when they didn’t have something to keep them preoccupied.

                The arcade was full of Pack raiders, who were having the time of their lives day drinking, betting caps on the target game, and causing a general ruckus. Corinne had never really talked to Fritsch, but they shared an eyeroll at one kid, who had clambered into the Nuka Zapper Race and dared his friends to try and hit him. They weren’t using real guns, but several of them had pilfered basketballs from the hoop-toss game, and one woman had a fistful of darts. Alright then. As close to in-order as mattered, she supposed.

                Without Mags and William in-house, she would have thought the Operators would be in a similar state of disarray, but it was just the creepy scientist hidden away in a back room and a couple of guards playing pool in the lounge. Evidently, Mags and William didn’t see fit to leave too many of their people unsupervised and under-worked. Smart.

                She poked her head into the amphitheater on her way to the market, but it was pretty much abandoned. Now that the place had been emptied out, those who remained seemed to stick together in groups, and hell, she really couldn’t blame them. There wasn’t too much bad blood now, but she wouldn’t put it past any of them to pick a fight out of boredom. The Disciples in particular looked like they were two steps away from pulling a knife on the next person who passed their collective line of vision, and if they weren’t such a mess right now, she’d take that threat more seriously.  

                The market was a different story, and after the uneasy quiet of the rest of the park, that was almost a relief. Runners from each gang were hanging about, picking up supplies, grabbing lunch, or just sitting and chatting amongst themselves. The market stalls were manned by the people she’d met briefly a few days prior, and everything seemed to be in working order. Each person in their place and each space relatively tidy and running smoothly. People bartered, bought, and blustered. There seemed to be an argument taking shape over by the medic stall, but so long as it didn’t come to blows, she didn’t care.

                She grabbed a cola from Hal over at the food stall and plunked herself down onto a bench to watch Gage as he made the rounds to restock and get a sense for the general mood.

                Alright. She’d given the gangs territories, and all that was nice and balanced for now. Step one: done. The next thing was to make sure needs were met. She couldn’t have Disciples just hanging around with nothing to do; if they didn’t have a goal to work towards and blood to spill, tedium would make them vicious.

                Violent, profitable, and free. Her initial assessment hadn’t been comprehensive, but she’d gotten to the heart of it.

                She’d given them free. The Pack should, in theory, be happy enough. And she wasn’t seeing anything to the contrary there. Mason and his mutts had set-out early and started on their settlements. She’d bet money (caps, she supposed) that they were already stringing up dead animals as decorations and setting up fighting pits in the theatre at the Safari. No way in hell they hadn’t gotten to work making the Kingdom their own.

                Profitable, she was still working on. They had traders and scavvers. Which was close? But she would need a more stable source of income to keep the Operators happy, and she would probably want to make that her next project, since she had already laid the groundwork.

                Violent, she hadn’t thought she’d need to work on. The whole place seemed violent enough to her, but with how mopey the Disciples in NukaTown were looking, she would evidently need a little something more to keep them occupied. They had the Gauntlet, but it hadn’t seen a visitor since she’d arrived, and she wasn’t wholly sure how likely another traveler would be right now. Especially not since she’d freed the traders, because there was always the chance that they’d spread the word about the Gauntlet and the NukaWorld gangs.

                Roaving squads? Maybe. She was still finding Gunners every so often on the road; maybe she’d send some Disciples on a task-force to suss them out. Two birds with one stone: keep the maniacs busy and get rid of the only rival gang in the area. Maybe. She’d have to keep working on that, but the idea showed some promise.

                She was making a mental note to run that by Gage later when she saw one of Nisha’s pets striding over. Petite blonde woman, with a high, soft voice and the lilt of a southern accent. Gage had mentioned her being Nisha’s right hand once, when they’d been discussing the dynamics of each gang. Dixie, if she remembered right, though it was hard to be sure when the Disciples all wore those damned masks.

                “Do you have a moment, Overboss?” Dixie’s tone was sickly sweet like iced tea with a little too much honey. “Nisha had a question for you.”

                Nisha, huh? Well. Corinne had to have seen this one coming. She glanced over at Gage, who was still across the market, haggling. Setting down her drink, she stood up from the table and dusted the front of her t-shirt.

                “Alright. Where is she?”

                Dixie jerked her head towards the door leading out of the Market.

                “She wants to meet at the Cola Cars arena.”

                Something sat wrong in the pit of her gut, but Corinne nodded. Another glance back at Gage told her that he was still haggling, leaning halfway over the counted of some Pack mutt’s shop. Probably getting bullets. She opened her mouth to call him over when she felt a sharp jab between two ribs on her back.

                “I wouldn’t, darlin’.” Dixie’s voice was still bright and cheery, but the knife bit into Corinne’s skin. No one seemed to notice. Casual as can be, Dixie twisted the point. “Nisha wants to talk to you. Just you, for now. And I would prefer bringing you to her in one piece.”

                “You’re threatening the Overboss of Nukaworld, Dixie. Do you really want to be doing that?” Corinne struggled to keep her voice steady. Gage still hadn’t turned around. She willed him to turn around—to just look back over his shoulder like he usually did to make sure she hadn’t made a mess of his precious parks—but no. He didn’t see her.

                “Just keeping us on the level, sweetheart! Our Gage tends to overreact a little, but Nisha seems to think you’ll be more _amenable,_ see.”

                The knife started to sink into her skin, not far enough to put her internal organs at risk, but just deep enough to draw blood. She could feel it snake down her side, seeping into her shirt. Dixie jerked the blade up a little and brushed a rib in the process. Pain, bright like fire.

                “Come along now, darlin’!” Dixie nudged Corinne forward. “Don’t want to keep Nisha waitin’.”

                Corinne straightened her spine and strut to the door and out of the marketplace with as much dignity as she could with a knife between her ribs.


	28. Conflict Management

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gage let's Cori out of his sight for one minute and she's gone.

                The idea was to get a sense for how the dust was settling, but so far, all he’d done was gone and given himself a headache talking to punk kids who didn’t know dick about shit. The Brahmin in the corner pen were the only ones who didn’t feel the need to bitch at him in the hopes of getting the Overboss’ ear.

                Bullets first. The kid from the Pack at the Aaron Corbett’s old weapons stall (the one who he outright refused to call “Deathclaw” ‘cause it was a stupid fucking name) sold him what he had, but whined the whole time about not getting enough action. He wanted to kill shit, no way around it, and felt like Mason was punishing him. As a point of fact, Gage was almost sure that Mason was punishing him for something or other. Maybe for that stupid name, he didn’t know. Either way, if Mason was punishing this kid by keeping him penned-in at the Market, it wasn’t his or Cori’s business to set him free.

                Mason had been smart, though. The next stall over was Maria, who was also from the Pack and seemed a lot more level-headed. She had built her shop from scrap and set it up between two of the old stalls, leaning closer to her fellow Pack runt, probably to keep him from starting shit he couldn’t finish. No real complaints. When he checked-in, she made a face that he wasn’t going to buy anything but said she was fine, otherwise. Alright then.

                Alice from the Disciples had taken over Shelbie’s old General Store. Looked the same too; it had probably escaped most of the damage when the raiders threw a tantrum over the traders up and leaving. She’d nailed a new sign over the table in the middle, but it was the same store. Full of useless junk and bric-a-brac, but he spotted some chems and a couple of knives under the counter, so she was probably well on her way to buying and selling whatever the hell she goddamned chose. She griped about being stuck here too, but what else was new? They were raiders, not wastelanders. They wouldn’t be satisfied with this life, and hell, he didn’t care if they were so long as they did as they were told. And Alice seemed afraid enough of Nisha to stay put.

                Whisper was the other Disciple, stationed a stall over at the clinic, which had been expanded. She was small and looked skittish. Kept glancing over at Alice, who nodded. Interesting. He made a note to keep an eye on them. Whisper talked to him, though she didn’t say much. Clinic was up and running, no she didn’t need anything, and yes, she was fine where she was. Didn’t much matter if it was true so long as she kept doing her bit. Her partner was an Operator named Vince. Slick looking guy with his thumbs looped in his belt and a grin. Had everything he wanted, or so he said. Caps and something to do with his time. Tell the Overboss Mags sends her regards. That message didn’t seem encouraging to him, personally, but he’d worry about that later.

                The other Operator ran a food stall where Maddox’s old chem shack had been. Hal was just as pleased with the run of things as Vince. Set-up works fine for him. He’ll sell food, alright. Sure. Peeking over his shoulder showed Gage that most of the “food” Hal was selling was canned garbage and chems. So much for swapping out the chem shack. It had been his idea and a good one. Make chems a little harder to get, keep everyone a little cleaner, and see if that helped keep the gangs focused and in-line. Oh well. He’d tried to get them to clean up their act. Only so much one man could do. One of these days, Gage would just love to get a look at their books—Vince’s and Hal’s. He had a feeling there was a reason they were both happy with the circumstances. Trust the Operators to be satisfied with skimming money from the till, but he’d predicted they’d do as much. Besides, what the fuck did caps even matter this far away from a city? He’d never understand the Operator’s obsession, but whatever kept them happy, he supposed.

                Alright. Some general grumblings, but nothing he could forsee being an issue. He’d hung around, listened in, but to learn anything more, he’d have to talk to Shank to get an idea of the general mood. They could do that on their way out. Maybe stop by the café to see how old Lauren Plummer was doing. Best he knew, she and Keith were still there. Didn’t associate much with the rabble from the Market, and mostly kept to their own. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d seen either of them outside the place. They could get a bite to eat and then head back to Fizztop. Maybe spend the night in.

                He turned back towards where he’d seen Corinne sit down, but she wasn’t there.

                In fact, she wasn’t anywhere. Not that he could see. Not in the pavilion in the middle, not by the benches, not by the gates. Nowhere. He glanced around again just to see if he was losing his mind, but no. Fuckin’ vanished. And if he didn’t know Corinne well enough to know that she was too much of a chicken shit to go wandering on her own, he’d have been right mad about it.

                But she wouldn’t ever wander the parks alone. She knew better.

                His stomach sank. It wasn’t like he could go around asking everyone if they’d seen her. Just about now, the last thing he wanted to do was raise suspicion or make people think she couldn’t handle herself. Raiders could sense instability from a mile away, and they had just barely gotten themselves on solid footing. The image she needed to project was strength; she needed every last one of those dipshits to think that she could skin them alive without batting an eyelash. Any one of them so much as thinks that he’s worried she ain’t safe and she sure as hell won’t be.  

Keep calm, damnit. Start where he’d last seen her and work from there. He walked back towards where she’d been standing nice and slow, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. No footprints or anything, though that made sense. There were, however, drops of blood on the ground, and it wasn’t a lot but panic still spiked through him like a jolt of fucking lightning. Could be anyone’s blood. Nuka World was no stranger to it; that was for sure. But it was fresh and he couldn’t shake the thought that it was probably hers. Which also meant that she hadn’t gone of her own free will, which wasn’t a surprise, but wasn’t a comfort either. No trail, though. Not enough blood to leave a real trail. Didn’t matter. Time to get walking. Longer he waited, better chance there was that he wouldn’t find her. Not in time, at least. Not alive.

                He did a lap of the market as fast as he could without drawing any eyes. Marched like he was headed to one of the far stalls and then turned to meander back. Nothing out of place, so far as he could see. So she wasn’t in the market. He headed out the gate and into the park, but then he was facing Pack territory. Would Mason? Nah. Not Mason. Mason wasn’t the brightest bulb, but he wasn’t the dimmest neither. Another member of the Pack? Maybe, but she’d just offloaded territory in their favor, and they’d taken a shine to her because of that, last Gage had checked. Christ, though, it could be anybody. He usually had his ear to the ground better than this. Could spot a coup a mile away. What was he missing?

                Nisha. Nisha was the one with a bone to pick. Wasn’t Mason or Mags; they had what they wanted right now. If he knew anything about anything, it was Nisha.

                So he had a strong hunch it was Nisha, but where in the hell had Nisha dragged her? If it was Mason? The Ampitheatre. No question. The man liked an audience. Mags? A dark alley or behind a building. Mags wasn’t gonna risk her skin putting on a show. Nisha, though. Nisha was a wildcard. Smart, sure, but impulsive. No telling where Nisha would take her. He was gonna have to bite the bullet and ask, even if it didn’t look good. If he was asking anyone, though, it was Shank or nobody. At least Shank knew how to keep his mouth shut, for the most part.

                Gage found Shank smoking by the front gates, leaning against the walls of the Market.

                “Well if it isn’t Nuka World’s favorite cyclops.”

                “Hey Shank.” He worked to suppress the panic. Keep his voice level.

                “Got something for me, Gage?”

                Gage shifted his weight. This was a bad idea. Shank had more information than anybody, but if he let slip about the Boss’ issue with Nisha, they could have problems. It was the least risky option, but if there was one thing raiders had taught him, it was that you can’t trust anybody, no matter how compatible your interests seem.

                “Looking for the Overboss. Gotta give her some news on a new territory. You seen her?”

                “New territory?” Shank tipped the brim of his hat up, eyes dark in the shade. “You hear about something I didn’t, my friend?”

                “Just a little place. Probably not worth our time.”

                “Seems like you may not need to find her, then.”

                “Should probably tell her anyways.” Gage folded his arms over his chest. “She is the Boss, after all.”

                “If I were you, I wouldn’t want to piss her off with shit that ain’t worth her time. I hear she has quite a temper.”

                Says fuckin’ who? He shook that one off as something to think about later and squared his shoulders. No time for this bullshit.

                “Doesn’t matter. She wants to hear about every option we got. And you wouldn’t want to get in the way of the Overboss and expansion, would you, Shank?” He said it just loud enough that a couple of raiders quirked their heads in their direction. Shank caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and grinned.

                “When were you gonna tell me about the Boss and Dixie, Gage?” Shank’s grin showed all his teeth, bared like a nightstalker’s. “Seems like the kinda thing I oughta know.”

                Dixie. So it was Nisha. That was both good and bad—good because he was on the right track and bad because it was Dixie. Of all people, Dixie. His stomach dropped.

                “You’re gonna want to tell me which way they went, I figure, before I beat it out of you.” Dixie. _Dixie._ Dixie who had skinned a woman alive. Dixie who had slit the throat of an Operator while fucking him. The longer he waited, the worse things would be when he caught the fuck up. He didn’t have the fucking time to circle with Shank right now.

                “You’re showing your hand, Gage.” Shank smirked wider and then tilted the brim of his hat back down. He’d have to think of how Shank could use this later. Do some damage control. But for now, he was two seconds away from shaking the man. “I’ll take the time to mull all this over while you head to the Cola Cars Arena as fast as you can.”

                The Arena. So Nisha was still bitter about how things had shaken out after Coulter. This could be bad. Gage nodded and took off towards the arena, breaking into a sprint the second people were out of sight.  Almost slammed into NIRA.

                There was a little chant in the back of his head just repeating _bad bad bad bad_ on a loop like a broken record. Didn’t want to think about it, but it was completely possible that she was already dead. That he’d find her corpse and stumble right into a trap in the process. He’d be dead without time enough to regret it. Best bet for him might be to drop everything and hit the road while he still had the chance, but if she was still alive? If Nisha hadn’t just gutted her on the spot? Wasn’t good odds, but he was already moving.

                But if she was dead?

                It would be all his fault, wouldn’t it? He’d propped her up as the Overboss, and he’d let her out of his sight. Sharp-tongued, wise-ass Corinne. It’d be all his fault if she died. Or if she suffered. Worse. That was worse. Because Nisha wasn’t known for doing things quick and easy, and if she was using Dixie…It would be bad. Grusome. She’d be flayed or cut to ribbons or all her limbs would be broken, or worse, she’d be alive but only barely clinging, dying at his feet as he burst through the door—

                No. Stop that. Panic would cloud his judgement, and he needed to keep his head if he was going to be any use at all. No matter what he found when he caught up, he needed to keep a cool head.

                He made it to the Arena, loaded his gun, and crept through the double doors.


	29. Balestra

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noun. In fencing: an offensive move consisting of a short jump followed by a lunge.

                Corinne had taken fencing in college. She never had the patience for epee or foil, but she was hell with a sabre. Her favorite move was the stop-cut, swatting her sabre against an opponent’s forearm when they hesitated. Point and priority: Corinne. Fighting like this, the focus was on forward momentum and persistence; the idea was to maintain speed all throughout, always pushing. At least, that was how she fenced. Quick and relentless, never on the defensive. The moment the bout began, she was advancing. 

                She recognized Nisha’s play with Dixie as a perfectly executed balestra in more ways than one. A sharp hop forwards, body poised to strike. A balestra was usually followed by a lunge, and a lunge very easily followed by a hit, if the opponent’s defense wasn’t up to snuff. Her coach had been on her case all four years of her undergrad to work on her defensive moves, but really, if she was being honest, she’d never gotten good at playing defense.

                “Overboss. Glad you deigned to join us.”

                “I assumed this must be something very important for Dixie to express such a need for urgency.” Stall. She needed to stall. She needed to stall, and she needed to talk her way out of this. That was the only way she stood a chance of making it out alive.

                Nisha smirked, cracked lips quirking up at the corner. She gestured to a seat across from her. They were in the Disciple’s box up in the stands, looking down on the arena where Corinne had shot Coulter until there was nothing left of his skull. She remembered the whole thing hazy, as if she’d dreamed it. The colors washed into each other. The only thing that remained sharp about that memory was the tang of blood and the gut-punch of fear that pounded through her when Coulter got his arm around her. She swallowed the convulsive shiver that threatened to radiate from her ribs out and sat down.

                “You like to talk, don’t you, Overboss?”

                “As a matter of fact, I do.” Corinne mirrored Nisha’s relaxed lean, one arm slung over the back of her chair, legs crossed at the knee. “Sweet of you to notice.”

                “Cute.” Nisha steepled her fingers and leaned forward in her seat. For a second, Cori could see the oak-brown eyes behind her heavy metal mask. There was a screen. You couldn’t see it unless you were up close, but cut into her mask was a metal screen with a grate so fine you could barely make out her features even a couple of inches away. Like a fencer’s mask. She shook the thought and picked at one of her nails like she was unaffected.

                “I was giving things a thought, _Overboss,_ and I realized that we may not have understood each other when you landed yourself on the throne.” Nisha’s tone was conversational, but her shoulders were rigid. A tall man behind her twiddled a knife as long as his forearm in his fingers. She hadn’t met him before, but something about the way he held himself spelled danger—too stiff, too taut, like he was a second away from snapping. Dixie leaned against her chair, unarmed but coiled tight like a spring under pressure. All Nisha’s real power consolidated in one place. This was a full-on planned offensive maneuver and Corinne was alone, caught unawares, and barely even armed. Nisha leaned forward in her chair as if she could see the realization setting in, a wicked grin tipping the edges of her razor-slash mouth.

                “You see, Boss. I don’t want Nuka World. If I wanted it, I would have it. What I want is much simpler.”

                That was patently untrue and everyone knew it, but Corinne nodded anyways.

                “And I’m sure you’ll tell me what that is someday?”

                “You do like running your mouth, don’t you?” Nisha leaned back in her chair. “Of course I will. I want one of Mags’ territories.”

                “You have three, Nisha.” The key was to look confident. Even if she didn’t feel it. Corinne shifted up straighter and folded her hands in her lap. Nisha made a small sound that was somewhere in the ballpark of a laugh but not close enough to the real thing to warrant the title.

                “One,” she said. “I have one park. I also have a broken-down house and an unfortified gas station, but those aren’t really territories so much as they are leftovers. That’s hardly fair for your most powerful gang, isn’t it?”

                There was no good way to answer this. She couldn’t agree or disagree that the Disciples were the strongest because agreeing would pander to Nisha and make her seem weak, and disagreeing would pick a fight she wasn’t prepared to finish. She couldn’t argue that her decision was fair because there was no way she’d be able to sway Nisha to agree. She couldn’t offer more, or she’d just prove that she’d cave under pressure, and she couldn’t threaten to take space away, because it would get her gutted on the spot. They’d moved from fencing to tight-rope walking, and Nisha was bouncing on the wire.

                Clock running out. If she waited too long to respond, she’d lose all the more ground. Corinne nodded slowly and took an even breath as if she were riding out the silence intentionally. Leverage. Think leverage. What did Nisha want? Power. What did she _not_ want? Shit shit shit. Who even knew? Did Nisha even fear death? Alright. Get it together. What would Nisha want to avoid? The panic was making it hard to think. And if a plan wasn’t coming, she’d need to stall. 

                “How is the Red Rocket coming along, Nisha?” Safe. Deflect.

                “Fine.”

                “And the Gunner’s defensive system at the Mansion? Were you able to re-rig it?”

                “Obviously,” Nisha hissed. Her voice oozed venom, and her fingers drummed against the armrest on her chair. Getting impatient for sure, but something was nagging at the back of Corinne’s brain. Just needed another moment to think; Christ, if only she had a minute to just _think._  

                “I’m glad to hear that. How are the shipments from the other gangs? Are Mason and Mags holdi—?”

                “We are receiving help, yes,” Nisha snapped. One fist slammed down on the arm of her seat. She ground her teeth before taking a breath and sitting up straighter. “That isn’t the question, though, is it?”

                “I suppose it isn’t.”

                “And do you recall my question, Boss?”

                “I do.”

                They sat there, eyes locked for a moment. Corinne was running out of cards to play. Think. What did Nisha want? Nisha wanted power, plain and simple. She wanted control and power, and she had no problem getting her hands dirty to acquire either. What did Nisha _not_ want? She wasn’t afraid of much. But there had to be something; there just had to be something in this world Nisha did not want to happen, some weak point, some—

                Then it occurred to her. Mags.

                Cori stood up to her full height, her arms behind her back, and paced like she was back in the old district courthouse. The tall man tracked her with his eyes. Dixie was just about ready to pounce.

                “Nisha, how powerful are those assaultrons you’ve got? The ones from the mansion.”

                “You’re not answering my—”

                “How powerful are they, Nisha?” Corinne braced her hands on the back of her chair and looked Nisha in the eye. “Because I’m willing to bet your Disciples have done some sick shit to those things, right? Rocket launchers, knives, grenades. I always see Disciples in the market, buying up ammunition. And your Disciples don’t really use guns, do they?”

                Nisha fell silent, her eyes glinting in the dull light behind the screen of her mask.

                “And I counted five assaultrons at the Manse when Gage and I took the place, but who knows how many you uncovered when you put your minds to it. There were even some old protectrons too, some eyebots, bunch of spare parts—gotten around to sprucing those up? I know your followers can be creative.” She wished she had her fountain pen and her leather-bound notepad. Would really complete the effect here. As it was, she still had Nisha’s full attention. Good. “And those bots, Nisha? Those bots are hard to kill, aren’t they?”

                “Are you approaching your point here, Boss?”

                “I’m getting there.” Corinne shot her a winning smile, sweet and soft. “What I’m saying is: wouldn’t it just be awful if Mason got his hands on those? Or, actually, Mags?”

                “What?” Nisha froze dead. Point: Corinne.

                “Mags. It was her territory you wanted, right? Maybe she’d be _amenable_ to this. But if we traded for, oh say, the Gulch, there’d have to be an honest trade. Because, of course, if you get her territory, she gets yours. And one of the benefits of the mansion is that it comes with all that tech. The station is still a bit of a fixer-upper, but all of that Gunner tech—that’s some top-notch gear. Plenty of spare parts, defenses, and weapons stashed in that mansion; it more than makes up for the station being a little wanting in size, wouldn’t you say?”

                Nisha didn’t answer.

                “And,” Corinne continued, “I wouldn’t dream of robbing Mags of that. Can you imagine the backlash if you tried to walk away from the mansion with those assaultrons? Mags and William would be furious. I’m willing to bet even Mason would have something to say.”

                “He always does. Your point?”

                She got the point. Corinne knew for a fact that Nisha got the point, because there’s no way in hell Nisha would let her keep talking if she didn’t care. Still, she took a minute. Old trick she’d learned from her boss—an iron whip of a woman. The longer someone stayed silent while you gave them the stare, the more control you know you have. Count it out.

                One.

                Two.

                Three.

                Four.

                Five.

                Silence. Corinne clasped her hands together loosely and turned back to Nisha without so much as a glance towards Dixie or the man. Focused.

                “My point is this: I gave you a gift, Nisha. If you don’t want it,” she said, “I can give it to somebody else.”

                Corinne dropped back down into her seat, hands folded safely on her lap again. Cards on the table. Read ‘em and weep.

                The silence lingered and right when she thought Nisha would break, Dixie started forward.    

                “Was that a threat?”

                Not good. She hadn’t even thought about Dixie. Nisha would hear strategy, but there was no reasoning with her pet. Nisha didn’t move to stop her, probably waiting to see how this played out. Dixie sauntered forward, that little knife glinting in her hand. Corinne didn’t dare move. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and sure she had her gun, but was she even close to quick enough on the draw to balance out three-on-one odds? Not a gamble she wanted to take.

                Plan. She needed a plan. A distraction? Something to ease Dixie. But what did Dixie want? So far as Corinne could see: blood. And that was it. She didn’t want caps or power, she wanted blood, and she’d take it out of Corinne’s flesh if she felt like it. Corinne tried not to squirm but sat up straighter in her seat before she realized she’d moved, and that was problematic because the second she twitched, Dixie perked up like she could feel the fear in her bones. Corinne didn’t have anything to say, but she started to open her mouth anyways, because any kind of stalling was better than no stalling at all. Just as she started to speak, she heard it.

                “Hey, Boss.” His boots echoed across the floor. “Sorry I’m late to the table.”

                Gage.


	30. Inquartata

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's been getting them through narrow scrapes since day one. Should have expected some bruises.

                “Was that a threat?”

                She’d been doing a fine job up till Dixie got it in her head that this was beneath them. Tripped at the finish-line. He was almost surprised, though, and not that he didn’t think she could handle herself, but because she’d been alone with Nisha, Savoy, and Dixie and was somehow still alive. That wasn’t anything to shrug at.

                Dixie was just about ready to spring. He could either keep his advantage—stay quiet and unnoticed—and risk Cori’s safety, or he could blow his cover to see if evening the odds kept Dixie in line and risk getting fuckin’ stabbed. He should have thought that through just a little bit more, but Dixie leaned in and Gage was already walking, boots heavy on the floor now that he wasn’t trying to keep quiet.

                “Hey, Boss. Sorry I’m late to the table.” He crossed the room to stand behind Corinne’s chair, one hand on his pistol. He looped the thumb of his free hand through his belt and waited, trying to look as calm as humanly possible.

                “Ah. Gage.” Corinne’s tone was even, but there was a trickle of sweat working its way down the back of her neck. She brushed her hands down her thighs once. Nervous gesture, he’d wager, though there was no way for Nisha to know that.

                “I see you caught up, Porter,” Nisha leered. “Nice of you to join us.”

                Gage nodded, because saying anything right now was probably pushing a bad position. Nisha’s nails were digging into the wood of her armchair and he would only be slightly surprised if she shattered the damn thing in her fists and then bludgeoned them to death with the broken pieces.

                Dixie, meanwhile, looked like she didn’t know quite what she should do with this development. She glanced between Nisha and Corinne, a heavy-looking hunting knife gripped tight. It was still good odds for her, being three-on-two, but the two had guns. Besides, Nisha probably wouldn’t have let Dixie kill the Boss in the first place. Hurt her? Sure. Gouge some holes in her, take a finger, inflict pain and instill some fear. If she was real serious about disrupting the balance of power, she’d have Dixie carve the Boss up in ways that would be obvious to the other gangs. Show everyone that the Boss wasn’t untouchable and shake things up just a little. But now that he was here, there wouldn’t be a chance of that without the fight escalating, and Nisha was not in a position to take on the other two gangs if she killed the Overboss outright just now.

                “We were just discussing the Disciples’ resource allotment, weren’t we, Boss?”

                He couldn’t see Nisha’s eyes through the mask, but he’d bet his weight in caps that they were trained on Corinne like she could light her on fire if she thought about it hard enough.

                “We were,” Corinne nodded. “We talked at length about the defensive bots at the Mansion. Do you remember the bots, Gage?”

                “I do, Boss.”

                “We were also speculating about the modifications the Disciples have made them since we were last there. Seems like the Disciples have been hard at work making use of all of the fabulous resources at the Mansion.”

                Nisha drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair, impatient.

                “Yes, we talked about that.”

                “And now that I think about it, didn’t we destroy all those haywire bots in the other parks, Gage? Excepting the Gulch, that is, since those were harmless.”

                “We did, Boss.”

                “Right, right. So that would mean that the Disciples are the only gang with assaultrons.”

                “Suppose it would mean that, Boss.”

                “Isn’t that fortunate for you, Nisha? That Mags and Mason don’t have their own armies of assaultrons? Of course, if you did trade with Mags, you’d still have four broken service Protectrons  in fun cowboy hats so,” she smiled sweetly, “there’s that.”  

                Nisha stared at the Boss for another minute, completely dead-eyed. Her lips were pressed in a line, but with the damn mask, it was impossible to tell just exactly what she was thinking. Dixie still had the knife. Savoy leaned patiently against Nisha’s chair.

                “I am glad we had this discussion, _Overboss_ ,” Nisha finally answered. Her tone was icy but final. Not a concession so much as an agreement to table this conversation for now. He knew Nisha well enough to know she wasn’t done fighting about this yet.

                Nisha rose gracefully and then jerked her head towards the steps. Dixie and Savoy followed her out, though Dixie lingered, staring, for just a moment longer. Fuckin’ creepy as all hell, but better than it could be, so they waited until the door echoed shut below them.

                Immediate. Like they’d flipped a switch on their way out the door. Corinne slumped over double, all the steel leaving her spine, her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands.

                “Cori?” He didn’t know what to do, so he stayed beside her and waited for something to happen.

                No sound. Not a peep. Her shoulders shook and each breath seemed to shudder through her, but she didn’t say a word. Finally, after a few minutes of silence, she stood up and walked down the stairs. Out the door. Through the town. Didn’t stop or talk or so much as breathe until she was back up at Fizztop. Shaking hands, she grabbed a bottle of vodka from under the bar and took a swig, nearly gagging it right back up. The distant, hazy look in her eyes faded a bit. He wanted to tell her to get it the fuck together, but no way of knowing how she’d respond just now, so he waited. She leaned against the bar, took another sip, and tipped her head back.

                “So,” she exhaled. “That wasn’t a good sign, was it?”

                “No, I recon it wasn’t.” He pat her shoulder, trying to be comforting, but it just felt awkward. “At least you know Nisha is scared of you. She even had Savoy come along.”

                “Savoy?”

                “The man? He’s Nisha’s enforcer,” he said. “Everyone thinks that Dixie is the one to be afraid of, and they’re so busy worrying about her that they forget to watch out for him. He’s quiet and efficient. If she brought both Dixie and Savoy for one little conversation with you? She’s afraid.”

                “Is that good or bad?”

                “Depends. Nisha believes that fear is power. If she’s afraid, she thinks you’ve got a handle on the situation here. But she knows better than anyone that a cornered dog is a dangerous one. And if she thinks she can overpower you—”

                “Bad.”

                “Well. It ain’t good.” He watched her face close, and some part of her almost looked disappointed. Like she’d thought she’d gotten the leg-up on this. And she couldn’t afford to think that right now; it would be more dangerous to get comfortable now especially, what with Nisha’s threat. He added, “this isn’t over, you know that, right?”

                “Are you sure? Maybe she’ll just. Give up.” She sounded almost whiney.

                “Boss,” he said sternly. “You shut her up for a bit, but only because you gave her something to think about. She’ll decide whether she likes your answer or not and if she doesn’t—and I’m bettin’ she won’t—she’ll try again. And next time? She’ll be more careful about how she comes at you.”

                “Here’s hoping she won’t slit my throat, then.” Corinne raised the bottle in a toast and then kicked back another sip. Sloppy. Fuckin’ sloppy, is what it was.

                Gage grabbed the bottle out of her hand, corked it, and set it on the counter.

                “She’ll do worse than that, Boss. You think the Pack is dramatic? You just wait and see what Nisha’s Disciples do to you. And they’ll keep you alive. The other gangs would at least kill you pretty quick. Nisha though?” He leaned down to look her in the eye. “Nisha will want a show.”

                Cori’s eyes watered for a second like she was going to cry, but instead, she barked a laugh.

                “Superb.”

                “I’m serious. It would be bad.”

                “Oh no, I believe you. Bad.”

                “Corinne you don’t know Nisha. She’ll make it hurt and she’ll make it last.”      

                “Oh I hear you. I’m good and fucked.”

                “You aren’t—”

                “Oh I think I am—”

                “I said—”

                “I heard what you said. I’m—”

                “—you’ve got a chance if you just—”

                “—going to suffer—”

                “Goddamnit, but you don’t have to!” He slammed his hands down on the counter and she jerked to attention, shoulders back and jaw clenched.

                “Please. Listen, Boss. Corinne.”

                They were nose-to-nose. Way too close. Blood pounded in his ears. Gage leaned back to catch his breath.

                “It doesn’t have to go south like that,” he said. “We can watch, listen, and plan.”

                “We can?” Her voice was at odds with how she looked; small and quiet, while she sat there stiff as a stone pillar.

                “We sure as hell can try. Alright?”

                “Alright.”

                “Good.” For fuck’s sake.

                He jammed his hands into his pockets and paced back to burn off some of the adrenaline, because if anyone knew how to rile him up, it was her. Took a couple of breaths. Alright. Fine. They were fine. She wasn’t dead, and his neck wasn’t on the chopping block yet. There was time and resources on their side.

                Corinne had been taken. She had a gun on her hip and she’d still been taken away from the market and led somewhere else. First order of business had to be making sure that shit didn’t happen ever again. Step one.

                “We’re going to teach you how to fight,” he said.

                “I know how to fight, remember? I did kill Coulter.”

                “Not like that.” He reached out for her forearm to lead her to the middle of the room and she let him, like a dancer following her partner. “You should know how to fight without a gun, because if Dixie comes looking for you again, she won’t give you the option.”  

                “You want me to fistfight Dixie.”

                “I want you to know enough to give yourself some distance so you can shoot Dixie in the fuckin’ head.”

                She considered for a moment before nodding. He was right, though, and she had to know it. Dixie would come in close; any Disciple worth their salt would. So she needed to know how to get away. First, though, it would be good to see what she was working with.

                “Punch me.” He hunkered down into a fighting stance.

                “You’re making this too easy, Gage.” Corinne eyed him up and down with a bit of a smirk on her face, but there was something not quite right about it. Her eyes were cocky but her body curled just a little, like she was trying to escape. Weird.  

                “Just fuckin’ try it, Princess.”

                “I can—”

                “You gotta learn. Dixie can’t lead you around by the nose like that,” he grumbled. “I’m not always gonna be around to pull your ass out of the fire.”

                She straightened up a little, but something uneasy flickered across her face. Ghost of a frown. Couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but it wasn’t good. Corinne lunged forward and it wasn’t a bad punch, necessarily, but it was clear something in her wasn’t clicking. A catch in her step. She didn’t want to do this. He caught her fist.

                “Try again.”

                She jabbed this time, connecting with his palm. Better, but still not firing at one-hundred-percent.

                “Again.”

                She hit him a few more times, but each punch was reluctant. Half-hearted. Wasn’t like she was bad at this; she was sloppy, sure, and unpredictable, but she could fight. Her performance with Coulter in the arena had convinced everyone of that. She’d been high as a kite stumbling through that bout, but she couldn’t afford that kinda shit now and he _knew_ in his bones he could pull that same fight out of her if he tried. She’d need it.

                She lashed out again, but it still wasn’t even close to what she was capable of. He wasn’t going to get anything out of her like this. Well. What do you do when something ain’t working? Change tack. Gage dropped low and lunged, his fist connecting with her side. Not hard, but hard enough to get her attention. Corinne jumped, clutching her ribs.

                “Gage, what the hell?”

                “You let your guard down.” He darted again, connecting with the opposite side. “Gotta be careful about that. If I had a knife, you’d be bleeding.”

                “Stop it.”

                He lunged again. Arm this time. Her shoulders went rigid. Not smart. When she locked up, he grabbed her around the waist, ducking her elbow and getting behind her before she could shift and process. His arm locked around her and he jerked back, pulling her off her feet. Her boots dragged down the shin of his jeans, but she wasn’t doing any damage.

                “Let go! I said let go, damnit!”

                “What are you gonna do when Nisha comes back, huh?”

                “Gage. Let go.”

                “Dixie was two steps away from gutting you like a fish. I know you got it in you. Fight the fuck back.”

                Corinne tensed up for a split second, but when he didn’t let go, her heartrate spiked so fast he could feel it against his chest. Before he had a second to process, she was a mass of thrashing limbs, kicking, hitting, squirming. He couldn’t hold onto her. She dug her boot into his inner thigh and kicked down hard enough where he dropped her as a reflex. Cori hit the ground, rolled, and popped back up in front of him, sweat plastering her hair to her face as her chest heaved with each breath.

                Feral. That was the best word for the look in her eyes. Feral.

                She threw herself at him, putting all of her weight into her lunge and charging like a Deathclaw trying to tip a caravan wagon. She was smaller—couldn’t bowl him over—but managed to jam her shoulder up into his diaphragm hard enough to stun. When he stumbled back, she didn’t let up. She punched him in the stomach, two quick jabs right to the gut. Would have been worse if she could put more power behind the punches, but it was nothing to shrug off, that was for sure. Before she could bruise him up worse, he hooked one of her legs with his and pulled back, trying to knock her off balance. She followed without collapsing, too flexible for that, and ducked under his arm to jab him in the side good and hard. Sharp, bony little fists, but she could do damage.

                He dropped to his knee, taking her with him, and she scrambled to get up and out of his grasp. No dice—he had the leverage now. Size and muscle were on his side, speed and unpredictability on hers. He knocked her onto her back and leveraged his weight to pin her to the floor. Still, even completely subdued, she thrashed like she could kick her way through him if she tried hard enough. Her arms came up, one pounding into his chest, the other a slamming into his throat hard enough to push him back. Couldn’t breathe. Head spinning. He sat up enough to grab her and locked her wrists over her head, throwing a leg over hers to keep her from kicking him in the groin. She headbutt him when he got too close, so he had to stretch back as far as he could to avoid her. His vision swam before righting itself.

                The sound that came out of her was almost terrifying. A low growl that escalated into shriek. All rage and fear—something deep-seated. Where the hell was this earlier?

                “Princess? Pri—Corinne, it’s alright!” He eased up a bit, but couldn’t risk letting her go all the way for his own safety. In fairness, he’d wanted to see what she had in her. He saw, alright. And he’d be seeing stars for days after, he reckoned.

                She caught her breath and stilled, gasping like he’d choked her. Gage sat up slowly while he waited for his head to stop spinning and righted himself, giving her space to reorient. She blinked, shivered, jolted up straight, shook her head. And then, she cried. Didn’t make a sound, but her eyes watered up and overflowed.

                Oh no.  

                “Just me, Princess.” He sat back on his calves and held up his hands in surrender. “You’re alright. It’s just me.”

                She looked at him and blinked.

                “Well. Good news is: you can definitely fight back if you gotta.”

                She still didn’t say a thing. Alright. Looks like that line of conversation was going nowhere fast, so he let it go and started to stand up. It was when he stretched out his hand to take her with him that he noticed. She flinched. All he did was reach out and she jerked back so fast, and that was when it struck him that this may not have been his best idea. There was a sinking feeling in the pit of his gut.

                “Need help?”

                She nodded and accepted his hand, so he pulled her onto her feet. Upright and standing, she looked a little dazed.

                “You alright?”

                She looked at him for another minute before nodding. Very slowly, he opened his arms. Not even sure why he did it. Just felt right. That sense must have been onto something though, because she walked into his space and buried her face in his shirt. So close, he could feel her shaking. The heat from her flushed skin eked through his thin shirt. Her breath was cool against his shoulder, but stuttering like she had hiccups. For a second, it seemed like he was the only thing holding her up; she leaned against him and her knees wobbled, all the strength from a moment ago drained away. He wrapped his arms tight around her and smoothed her hair into place. She all but fell apart, shaking all over like she was dying of cold or suffering her own private earthquake.

                “Hush,” he muttered into her hair. “S’alright. But you gotta get it together.”      

                Cori sucked in a breath like it was the last one she’d ever take.

                “I don’t even know why I’m shaking so bad.” Her voice was thin. “It’s just you. Besides, I won, right? I won.”

                “You did for now.”

                “They didn’t kill me.”

                “No, they didn’t.”

                “Dixie had a knife to my back and I’m still here.”

                Gage swallowed around the lump in his throat.

                “Yeah, Princess. You’re still here. S’more than can be said for most.”

                “I’m alive.”

                “You are.”

                “I’m still alive.”

                She’d cracked. Been falling apart since the first night, and this was the straw that broke the camel’s back, along with any strength she had left. Shouldn’t have pushed her like that; he knew he shouldn’t have pushed her like that, and now she had gone right ahead and lost her goddamned mind.

                De-escalation was his specialty. Always had been. He’d talked enough people back from enough ledges by now to know a lost cause when he saw one, and she was teetering on that edge, about to swan-dive right into bat-shit fuckery any minute now. He felt helpless. Useless.

                Then she laughed. Laughed too loud and too hard and too sharp to sound right, her eyes wide like she was watching outside herself and didn’t know what was going on any more than he did. Like she’d spooked herself with the sound. She clapped a hand over her mouth.

                “I’m thirty-three.” She whispered it like a secret.

                “Are you?”

                Cori nodded and said “my birthday was yesterday.”

                Well. Alright.    

                “Any luck and you’ll make it to thirty-four.” He didn’t know what else to say at this point. He was stepping on uneven ground.

                She looked up at him with eyes as round as caps and this look on her face—halfway between a meltdown and a fit of giggles, two steps from a break with reality entirely—just stuck with him.

                “Lucky. That’s right. I was the lucky one.”

                Hell if he knew what nonsense she was talking now. Corinne got real quiet for a moment. Didn’t even breathe, so far as Gage could see. Just stared straight ahead at the floor. Finally, she said the word again, “lucky,” and nodded.

                Without a word, she kicked off her boots, slipped out of her jeans, and curled up in bed. Eyes shut, covers tugged up to her chin, and she was out in a second. Gage propped himself up in the chair across from her and waited the whole night through in case she woke. Didn’t want to smother her or anything, but if she woke up and panicked, she’d probably be better off not alone.  She freaked out when she felt alone.

                She didn’t wake up, though, and in the morning, it was like nothing had ever happened.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi again! Guess who's back in Fallout Hell! :) 
> 
> I wrote a not-love-story about Gage and it really just made me want to romance him good-and-proper, so I have been sitting on this for some time now. As always, I super appreciate any comments/critiques anyone is willing to offer! 
> 
> If you are interested, you can find my Tumblr here: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/starlightwrites  
> It is mostly Fallout/Mass Effect posts and Fanfic updates. :)
> 
> Thank you for your time, and much love to all! <3


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